buyat bay

polluting gold-mine shut down by indonesian police

The mine has been dumping 2,000 tons of mercury and arsenic-laced mine waste (tailings) into the bay daily through the use of Submarine Tailings Disposal (STD) since 1996.

In a similar case in Papua New Guinea, Canadian mining company Placer Dome's Misima gold mine has been responsible for fish kills when cyanide was released down the STD pipe.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the main lending arm of the World Bank - recently ignored recommendations in the Extractive Industries Review (EIR) commissioned by its parent organisation, the World Bank Group. The new IFC draft mining guidelines state, "deep marine tailings disposal may be considered as a preferred alternative" in certain circumstances, and also refuses to rule out riverine or shallow marine tailings disposal.

Hundreds of demonstrators held a province-wide protest in late July against another gold mine in eastern Indonesia operated by Australia 's biggest independent gold producer, Newcrest Mining. Environmentalists and local people held protests involving 67 villages in the North Halmahera province in the Maluku islands, where Newcrest operates its $100 million Toguraci mine. The demonstrators want Newcrest's Indonesian subsidiary, Nusa Halmahera Minerals, to share mine profits more equitably and recognise their ancestral land claims over the area.

more information in the press release.

new 25-02-2005: buyat bay community not giving up on justice
The Buyat Bay community has not dropped its lawsuit against the gold mining company Newmont, despite a December 28th Newmont press release stating that the civil suit had been dropped and that the community had conceded that they had no evidence that the company had sickened the citizens with their mine waste.

"We never stated that we want the charges dropped against Newmont dropped and that we have reached a peaceful agreement with Newmont. We feel very heavy and disadvantaged by the statement by Newmont in the media" stated Buyat Bay community representatives in their December 31st letter to the South Jakarta court. The company’s Indonesian subsidiary Newmont Minahasa Raya dumped 2000 tons of mine waste daily into Buyat Bay from 1996 to 2004. Shortly after the disposal began, Buyat fishermen experienced a sharp decline in their fish catch and strange diseases appeared frequently in the community.

More information on the IFC's draft mining guidelines: www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/Content/DraftMining