Newmont faces off against police, activists

Newmont faces off against police, activists

Michael Casey,
Associated Press/Buyat Bay, North Sulawesi

Mention Newmont Mining Corp. in this impoverished seaside
community and villagers angrily recount how pollution from its
gold mine has killed the fish and sickened residents with
headaches, nausea and tremors.

But local leaders praise Denver-based Newmont for providing
hundreds of jobs and buildings schools and clinics. Complaining
villagers, they say, are just looking for a quick payout.

The world's largest gold miner is again at the center of a
controversy over the environmental impact of its operations.
Newmont stands accused of dumping 5.5 million tons of mercury-
and arsenic-laced waste into Buyat Bay from 1996 until the mine
ceased operations Aug. 31.

The charges have landed Newmont in legal trouble. Police
investigating the alleged pollution in September detained five
Newmont executives, including one American, for a month. And
villagers have filed a US$543 million civil lawsuit against the
company.

"We can feel there is something wrong in our bodies," said
Jemi Bawole, a 36-year-old villager who is part of the lawsuit.
"Newmont has to be held responsible."

Newmont denies the allegations that the waste it dumped was
contaminated and pointed to tests by the World Health
Organization and the country's Environment Ministry that show
water from the bay isn't polluted. But other ministry tests do
show that sediment from the bottom of the bay contained high
levels of heavy metals, raising concern about the long-term
impact to villagers.

The company contends that illegal miners -- thousands of whom
operate openly around its mine -- caused the pollution, dumping
tons of mercury into nearby rivers. Newmont says it does not use
mercury in its processing.

Newmont's troubles in Indonesia are the latest in a string of
accusations growing out of the company's operations on five
continents.

Opponents in Peru have sued Newmont over a mercury spill near
its Yanacocha mine that allegedly sickened 1,100. The company
says it has spent $16 million to clean up the site and is in
talks to settle the lawsuit.

In Turkey, the company's Ovacik mine was shut down in August
over concerns about the use of cyanide to processing the ore.
Newmont is also battling environmentalists in Nevada who say its
proposed Phoenix mine expansion will cause groundwater
contamination - something the company denies.

In Indonesia, civic groups filed dozens of lawsuits
unsuccessfully accusing Newmont of stealing land from villagers
to build a $180 million compound overlooking the bay that
includes an open pit mine, a processing plant and a housing
complex for 700 employees.

Environmentalists then turned their attention to the waste the
company dumped into the bay, claiming it sickened 80 percent of
the 300 villagers in the coastal community of Buyat Pantai. One
of the poorest village in the isolated region, it has a single
dirt road running through it and no electricity or running water.

"Before Newmont came, we only got colds and malaria," said
Nurbaya Patenda, 27. "Now, we suffer weird diseases. Even the
doctors are confused."

The accusations have divided residents. Villagers were accused
of faking illness and the only clinic in the area said their
symptoms were due to poor hygiene and diet. Local officials also
supported the company.

"Activists from outside have come into our community and
provoked people into challenging Newmont to get money," said
Frans Rolos, who oversees the district including the mine, on the
island of Sulawesi.

"They've tricked these people into believing that Newmont has
polluted the water," he said. "Now people won't buy our fish
because they think they are poisoned."

But critics have counter-attacked, accusing Newmont supporters
of currying favor with the company to receive money from its $2.7
million community development program or to get assets --
including bungalows overlooking the bay -- it plans to leave
behind now that mining in the area has ceased.

The controversy increased this summer after a local doctor
alleged that the villagers were suffering from Minamata disease,
first identified in the 1950s when more than 1,400 people died
after eating mercury-tainted fish caught in Japan's Minamata Bay.

Local media ran pictures of crying villagers with tennis ball-
sized lumps on their necks and rumors -- widely reported but
proven untrue by WHO test results -- that 30 villagers had died
from the disease.

Police then called the Newmont executives in for questioning
and locked them up. The five men were kept in rat-infested cells,
slept on concrete slabs and were forced to share a cell block
with terror suspects in the Sept. 9 bombing of the Australian
Embassy.

"I can't tell you how bizarre this is," said Newmont vice
president Tom Enos. "We're being accused of causing Minamata
disease, of heavy metal poisoning. All the time, we knew there
was no pollution."

But the mixed test results will likely intensify the debate
over whether Newmont polluted the bay and raise further questions
about the process of dumping waste in the ocean.

Known as submarine tailings disposal, the method used by
Newmont is not allowed in the United States or Canada because it
would violate clean water standards. It has also divided the
mining industry with the world's largest mining group, BHP
Billiton Ltd., saying earlier this year it would not use the
method because "the circumstances in which the technology could
be considered acceptable are rare."

Newmont says the method is safe and defends using it at the
company's two mines in Indonesia because they are prone to
earthquakes which would make land-based disposal dangerous.

But P. Raja Siregar of Friends of the Earth Indonesia,
countered that "dumping tons of mine waste into the ocean, such
is done by Newmont, is irresponsible, outdated, and
unsustainable."

The controversy could spill over to Newmont's other larger,
gold mine on the island of Sumbawa, where villagers earlier held
demonstrations over demands for jobs and compensation for lost
land.

The Sumbawa mine is expected to dispose of about a half
billion tons of tailings in the ocean over the next decade and
environmentalists have accused it of pollution. But Newmont said
the to government investigated the complaints 18 months ago and
dismissed them.

While earlier WHO and environment ministry results showed that
levels of heavy metals in the water, fish and Buyat Bay
villagers' bodies are within safe standards, other ministry
findings showed arsenic in the sediment near Newmont's waste site
was 100 times higher than in other parts of the bay, which is
about two-thirds of a mile across. Mercury in seabed organisms
like worms was 10 times higher at the waste site than in other
parts of the bay, the study found.

Newmont says the results show the mine waste has not reached
the food chain.

But police - who say their own results show the bay is
polluted - have refused to drop their investigation into Newmont
and banned the five executives from leaving the country.

Environmentalist have seized on the sediment results to call
the prosecution of Newmont executives for pollution and the
government to move the villagers. They have also demanded the
government ban the disposal of mine waste at sea.