Is this natural beauty, rich biodiversity under threat?
Is this natural beauty, rich biodiversity under threat?
Fly over PT Freeport's concessional area in Irian Jaya and you
will see a spectacular view below.
The raw beauty of the land; vast, breathtaking rain forests,
ubiquitous swamps and tall mangroves, verdant mountains and
towering peaks, and alpine tundra covered with glacial ice are
just part of what you will see.
Then, when you ascend the 14,000-foot mountain, along the 74-
mile-long road on the ridge, you will see the company's heavy
equipment in action. There on Grasberg, PT Freeport is doing
business, digging through a mountain searching for copper, gold
and silver.
At the contract-of-work site, development has been progressing
at an alarming pace. It provides direct jobs to 16,000 people --
2,000 of those indigenous -- and indirect jobs to over 75,000
people.
The huge operation has raised a number of environmental issues
which have called for serious attention. The issues that
environmentalists often raised are the operation's affect on
glaciers, the tailings management and overburdened storage.
Over the years, PT Freeport has been making a great deal of
effort to disprove its opponents' charges that its environmental
management has not received the same priority as the engineering
challenge of establishing the mining operation.
Since the discovery of the Grasberg resources, the perception
of PT Freeport has changed from a mine that has about to close to
the expectation of extended activities for at least 40 years.
Dames and Moore, an international environmental consultancy
recently assigned to conduct PT Freeport's environmental audit,
recognizes that this has led to increased commitment in
environmental management.
"During the course of the audit, the team recognized a growing
realization of the environmental problems and a commitment to
address them," the company says.
With support from an international consulting organization, PT
Freeport Indonesia's environmental department has developed a
long-term environmental monitoring program (LTEMP).
LTEMP includes monitoring the environment, reclamation,
recycling and education. It provides the company with vital data
on a wide range of environmental impact categories.
PT Freeport Indonesia was already pioneering environmentally
friendly industrial activities when it submitted to a voluntary
independent environmental audit.
With criteria approved by the Environmental Impact Management
Agency and the Ministry of Mines and Energy, PT Freeport selected
two companies out of 10 bidders to conduct the audit.
International consultancy Dames and Moore announced in March
the results of its audit and Labat Anderson is expected to report
its findings in the near future.
Besides the external audit, PT Freeport Indonesia's parent
company conducts internal audits to ensure that it complies with
Indonesian law.
To provide analytical support for its environmental programs,
PT Freeport Indonesia operates a state-of-the-art environmental
laboratory at Timika.
The facility is manned by highly-professional staff and
equipped with sophisticated technology, including
spectrophotometers, a flow injection mercury analyzer and a
potentiometric stripping analyzer.
It processes hundreds of samples and performs thousands of
individual measurements. Regular samples are taken of mine water,
river water, ground water, tailings, soil, plant tissues, and of
the fish and shrimp in the area.
Tailings
Currently, about 125,000 tons of tailings and 20,000 tons of
natural sediment are washed into the Ajkwa watershed.
Dames and Moore has confirmed in its recent audit that
tailings are nontoxic.
Tailings are finely-ground natural rocks from which copper,
gold and silver minerals have been removed using standard
grinding and flotation techniques. No chemical is used in the
process.
On the government's approval, PT Freeport uses the river
system to transport the tailings and natural sediment to
lowlands, where they are contained and reclaimed.
"The present tailings management system is considered by the
team appropriate, given the circumstances that apply," the Dames
and Moore report states.
The company has contained about 130 square kilometers between
the east and west levees it has built inside the Ajkwa deposition
area for the tailings and sediment.
The deposition area is designed to handle a cumulative
production of 1.5 billion tons of ore. For that, the company's
board of directors have approved US$25 million in capital and
US$12 million for annual operating costs.
PT Freeport Indonesia will remove about 2.8 billion tons of
overburden from the Grasberg pit in addition to the 420 million
tons already extracted.
Overburden is the rock with no economic value that covers the
copper, gold and silver ore. This must be removed during the
mining process to reach the ore.
All areas affected by mining activities are revegetated under
the overburden management and reclamation program approved by the
Indonesian government.
"PT Freeport Indonesia has made the long-term commitment to
ensure the revegetation of all areas affected by tailings
deposition as soon as these areas become available, as well as
including the local Irianese people in these reclamation
activities," says Bruce E. Marsh, the Vice President for
Environmental Affairs.
Environmental groups have, over the past decade, raised
concerns that the mine's activities -- heat, blasting and dirt --
have led to the glacier receding.
But computer models, using historical data, photographs and
morainal debris, show that the recent recession began 120 to 150
years ago. It is similar to the recession taking place in other
equatorial countries, where glaciers are present.
Dr. Alex Wilson of the University of Arizona, after studying
recently the glacial environment, concluded that the glacial
recession is caused by global warming and is completely
unrelated to the operations of PT Freeport Indonesia.
It is apparent that with its recently-conducted environmental
audit and increased transparency, Freeport Indonesia has turned a
new page in its corporate history.