Australian mining giant BHP Billiton and the operators of the Ok Tedi copper mine in Papua New Guinea are being sued for civil damages exceeding $US4 billion ($A5.08 billion) by villagers on the Ok Tedi River.
PNG lawyer Carmellus Narakobi has lodged the lawsuit in the National Court in Port Moresby on behalf of 13,000 villagers seeking compensation for the destruction of their traditional lands along 38km of the river.
"The Ningerum people have suffered from tonnes and tonnes of arsenic, copper, zinc and other heavy metals dumped into this once pristine habitat where they had lived since time immemorial," Narokobi told PNG's newspaper The National.
Experts predicted it would take 300 years to clean up the toxic contamination, he said.
Narokobi represents six Ningerum clans who are not signatory to the Community Mine Continuation Agreement between landowners and Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML).
"They offered to pay 50 kina ($A22.50) per family a month for damages which is total exploitation and the government of PNG sanctions these kinds of programs," he said.
Most landowner groups in the region have signed the mine continuation agreements.
OTML management has conceded the environmental damage caused by mine tailings running into the Ok Tedi and Fly Rivers is far worse than first envisaged and is pursuing projects to curb it.
The company points to the mine's huge economic returns to PNG as well as the benefits to affected landowners who receive royalty and compensation payments and development projects.
Raised riverbeds and a process called acid rock drainage have destroyed or contaminated traditional food garden areas while fish and other marine life are expected to be off-limits for eating in future years.
The huge environmental problem was a major prompt for BHP Billiton to divest its 52 per cent shareholding in the mine to the PNG Sustainable Development Program Ltd in 2002.
The PNG government owns 30 per cent of Ok Tedi which is a major producer of copper concentrate for world smelting markets and in 2004 provided more than a quarter of PNG's export earnings.
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They seem to be doing well in the other waste disposal method, according to WHO but have not done so well in disposing the mines waste.
Compensated or not, the sad reality remains, what the people used to have will no longer be there. They have been deprived of their rights to enjoy their once healthy surroundings. It will take years or forever for the natural vegetation to return to its pristine state.
http;//www.thenational.com.pg(yesterday's paper)
Ok Tedi mine tops in managing waste
OK TEDI Mining Limited’s (OTML) management of health-care waste for its health facilities is of World Health Organisation (WHO) standard.
According to the company, Tabubil hospital is by far the best in the country in terms of managing its health-care waste.
The commendation came as a result of a presentation by OTML’s health surveyor Peter Boli at a health-care waste management workshop in Goroka last year.
A follow-up workshop was held in Port Moresby recently where part of OTML’s policy on proper disposal of waste is now being adopted by the Health Department and WHO, who are also working on a national policy on proper management of health-care waste.
Officials from the department and organisation were impressed with Mr Boli’s presentation of OTML’s policy, which included disposal of all health-care waste into designated bags for incineration at a heat of 1,000 degrees, with the ashes carefully put into a container and disposed off with a sawdust cover.
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