Fly in a mess
To the Wopkaimin of central Papua New Guinea, Mount Fubilan is a sacred mountain sitting on top of the land of the dead. To exploration geologists in the 1960s, it was a 2,200-metre peak that could be converted into a profitable copper and gold mining project.
In 1981, in the wake of gold prices soaring, the transnational Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML) consortium, named after the Ok Tedi river, was created to develop the project. Australia's Broken Hill Pty Ltd, America's Amoco and the PNG government each has a 30 per cent share in OTML. The Ok Tedi project became the major force in the economy of PNG. By the late 1980s, it accounted for 70 per cent of the country's capital expenditure and 30 per cent of its export earnings.
But the fragile ecology base of Ok Tedi has been torn apart. Since the mid-1980s, pollution from suspended sediments and heavy metals has been 10,000 times higher than US Envrionmental Protection Agency standards, threatening sources of staple food.
The river itself has taken worse. In June 1984, a barge transporting OTML chemicals overturned in the Fly River estuary, losing 2,700 60-litre drums of cyanide. In the same month, a bypass valve opened for two hours and 12 minutes, releasing 1,000 cubic metres of highly concerntrated cyanide waste into the river.
With outrage mounting over increasing river pollution, the PNG government contracted the Applied Geology Associates of New Zealand to reassess independently the environmental impact of the Ok Tedi project, but the government skipped two 1989 deadlines for declaring acceptable particulate levels.
According the consultants' report, pollution from continued production with total discharge would be staggering, with an 80 per cent fish kill in the middle reaches of Fly between 1990-1993 and a 60 per cent fish kill for the life of the mine. The government faced a choice between total discharge into the Ok Tedi or closure of the mine.
A further two-month extension met with sustained political pressure. Parry Zeipi, then MP for South Fly and now minister for environment in Port Moresby, warned the Ok Tedi environmental situation could brew into another Bougainville. During the extension period, the government presented a special development package to the landowners whereby in addition to increased social services for landonwers, they and the provincial government would get half of the national government's share in the mine.
On September 29, 1989, it was decided that OTML would avoid spending K380 million on constructing a permanent tailings dam and continue mining with total discharge of wastes, paying compensation to the people of the Fly River region from a fund created out of a levy on processed ore and mine waste. The national government would offset the loss of fish with fish ponds, chicken farms and piggeries. Underlying the government's decision was the thinking that with the Bougainville mine closed, it was essential to secure revenue from Ok Tedi in 1991.
On January 1990, more than 2,000 landowners blocked all access roads and closed the mine, demanding better economic compensation. The mine was reopened on the condition that it would be shut down completely unless positive steps were taken to finalise compensation demands.
In the early 1990s, Perry Zeipi was made environment minister and announced he would shut the mine unless it built a permanent tailings dam. The company rejected the idea of the dam as technically unfeasible in the earthquake prone mountains. But it moved to placate the vocal landowners by commissioning a survey to assess environmental damage along the Fly. The results would be used to compensate landowners for the environmental destruction.
But the landowners have not given up the fight on these assurances. At the recently held seminar in Port Moresby, Rex Dagi, a landowner from Fly claimed that 24 species of fish had disappeared in the lower Fly River area as a result of toxic waste in the river system.
Mining and petroleum minister Masket Iangalio admited in Parliament that there were problems in the Fly, but said also that the river system was the most closely monitored river system in world. He added, "If the people of PNG wish to have development, they should be prepared to accept a level of environment impact." But Iangalio will have to do more to convince the landowners that they have to live with the mess they did not create.
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