I THE article eIslanders demand stop to mining opsf (The National, July 5) is misinformed and deserves clarification to allay any community concerns.
It is important to note that currently there is no deep-sea mining in PNG.
Nautilus Minerals has exploration licences and exploration licence applications pending approvals by the PNG Government.
Nautilus Minerals takes its environment and community consultation very seriously.
It was unfortunate the paper did not get our comments before publication.
Contrary to implications made in the article, deep-sea exploration is a low impact activity, with very little disturbance.
It will take place in very deep waters, well away from reefs and traditional fishing grounds. It will not affect the livelihood of island people.
The article wrongly implies that no serious work had been done about environmental or stakeholder consultation.
Early this year, Nautilus Minerals gathered a group of local and international stakeholders with relevant expertise from NGOs, government and scientific community to discuss environmental and social issues that could form the basis of environmental and social studies.
The comprehensive environmental and social impact study now being conducted will be submitted to the National Government, as required under the Environmental Act.
With respect to community consultation, we are still in the preliminary stages of reviewing our onshore site options, but we have been meeting with a range of local communities to explain our exploration programme and seek local advice and feedback.
It should be noted that under current policy and practice, there is public consultation process called the Development Forum, which allows the government, community and developer to discuss all relevant issues before a mining licence can be granted.
When we come to this stage, there will be an opportunity for interested parties to meet and discuss.
We have a number of years before our exploration, environment and community consultation activities would turn to development but we will continue to consult with all stakeholders.
THANK you Mr Togolo for your letter titled eNo Sea Mining Yetf (The National, July 9).
It is indeed a colossal undertaking from any engineering and scientific standpoint regarding submarine mining.
According to Mining Journal Online and several other sources, mining will be done locally over the size two football fields, and after mining is completed, pits of 20m depths will be left.
I would think that primary disruptions to the ecosystem due to the generations of plumes by hydraulic suction, disruption of local thermal profiles along the suction funnels reaching down to the depths, and secondary influence through the introduction of nutrient rich waters at the surface, would influence the ecosystem.
The subsequent migration of the plumes and nutrient rich waters by complex regional and local hydrodynamic patterns may also be quite appreciable.
I know that your environmental team comprising of oceanographers and coastal engineers are vigorously doing numerical modelling to study various environmental impact scenarios coupled with the physical and
biological system on
both local and regional scales.
It would be particularly interesting to release such important basic hydrodynamic models of both vertical and lateral water mass transportation to assist in awareness activities to the general public, as well as the public discussion forum, to dispel any anxiety and reduce the potential for misinformation.
V. Badira
Tokyo
http://www.thenational.com.pg/071107/letter2.htm
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Strange indeed,
we no less about our ocean depths than we do about the surface of the moon.
Yet we are already getting assurances, that this type of mining will not disturb the envoirnment. Deep sea disposal of tailings is already being done in some places. (West Papua for one) The reports on the migration of sediments there, do not look promising.
To me, it appears that the mining companies in the grab for the easy dollar, will do anything, to avoid the expensive process of disposal of their tailings, in an envoirnmentally accetable manner. Be very careful about such assurances. By the time the average person on the coast notices any changes, it may well be too late to reverse them.
On a water planet such as this one, (the blue planet on the edge of the Milky Way) it is obvious that the oceans control the eco-system, more than all the world's forests put together. Growing up as a coastie, I always thought that the production of oxygen and the cleaning of the air, had to be done more by the oceans than the forests. It was only logical, with such a huge amount of water, compared with the area of the forests. In recent years, with the dicovery of Phyto-plankton, and the "scrubbing" effect of the waves, that science is backing up what was always my theory.
As a boy, growing up on the coast, one had only to sit down on a rock surrouned by the ocean for a few hours. Then, clear one's mind of everything, and become one with the ocean,to realize that this is a fundamental truth. The mining companies put me in mind of some of my friends. They reckoned I was a dreamer, while they rushed around doing little things of no consequence. So too with the mining companies. They run around in the quest of the almighty dollar. An unworthy cause.
As they shoulder one another,
In their rush and nervous haste,
For the miners have no time to dream,
They have no time to waste.
(My apologies to A.B. Patterson for adapting a few lines from one of his poems)
Be very careful......Ralph.
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Yes Ralf, Indeed its quiet hard to fathom why such confident blind assurance.
It's common knowlegde that at depths of 1.5km deep ocean currents are very dense and hence are quite slow. On occasions the velocity can go as low as 50cm/s. Based on that, A mass of water from the mine site(150km from shoreline) would take roughly around 4 days to reach the shorelines. The questions than become, would the sediment plume generated by the suction settle as soon as suction is over? would chemical and ionic bondings within the sediment plume prevent immediate floculations and coagulation of sediment and hence settling? Or would sediment plume be sustained by some deep sea entrainment process?
Ralf, you are absolutely correct, we are threading on martian territory.
kolwan
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Hehe,
it is with acute embarassment that I note, that I have spelt environment incorrectly three times.
By now it is manifestly obvious, that I cannot type, think, and spell, at the same time. Having the typing ability of a dyslexic Chimp, does not help. The difference between genius and stupidity, is that genius has limits.
Regards......Ralph.
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LOL...it's interesting, I was told by my professor many years ago. He said if you want to write a thesis, type what you say..so many times, we type what we say, and sometimes we even type the pronunciation, it gets even more fustrating when there is a language clash i.e japz.
Anyway, I had a good long discussion with few of my colleagues who are heavily involve in extension of the Haneda Aiport in Tokyo, the airport that was built in the middle of sea. In a nut shell, they say although deep sea current is slow, materials will be always be transported, that is the nature of an unbounded medium (fluid). Nothing short of a full scale numerical model must assist such an important decisions.
I sincerly hope, that current pattens pre-mining and during mining be showed to us. However, I doubt that will eventuate as no baseline hydrodynamic data have been collected as yet.
kolwan
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Thanks Kolwan,
I am afraid my knowledge of deep-water Hydrodynamics is very sketchy.
My knowledge in that area is limited to the shallows, (30 metres or less) thus the action of waves and surface currents, and the movement of objects on the surface. The latter really comes under Aerodynamics, and Fluid-mechanics.
However, that being said. I thought that under the intense pressure at great depths, (1,000 metres and more) small solids would sink more slowly than they would on the surface. Am I mistaken in this assumption? Not only that, but such cold water is denser anyhow.
If I am correct, this would mean that deep-water currents, would distribute these tailings even furthur afield, than would be normal in shallow water. Maybe they might stay in suspension for years.
Regards......Ralph.
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IT is difficult to believe that a country, whose past and present governments have had a poor track record of mine tutelage and regulation on land, will somehow be able to implement and maintain a robust regulation of underwater mining.
Globally speaking, there has been insufficient progress toward the creation of environmental regulatory systems specific to deep-sea mining by First World governments with jurisdiction over extensive sulphide deposits, let alone PNG.
This lax scenario, if not encouraged, has bolstered Nautilus Minerals to place one foot in the door.
Large capital investments and generation of revenues by underwater mining operations are likely to make regulation after the onslaught of commercial operations even more difficult once deep-sea mining becomes a reality.
It must be remembered that when CSIRO scientists first discovered the deposits in the Manus Basin off the Bismarck Sea in 1997, they were said to be the richest gold, silver, copper and zinc sulphide deposit ever found on the ocean floor. The potential has long been identified and the exploitation will soon follow.
Mel Togolo, PNG country manager for Nautilus, stated that we have a number of years before our exploration, environment and community consultation activities would turn to development in his letter No Sea Mining Yet (The National, July 9).
Now is the time to implement scientific, technological, and legal measures to minimise negative environmental impacts (including discouraging deep-sea mining activities near sensitive habitats such as the Bagabag Island).
PNG is said to be a testing ground for the controversial practice of seabed mining.
As such, we must scrutinise Nautilus
operation closely. Ultimately, Nautilus Minerals is in PNG to help Nautilus Minerals, not Papua New Guinea.
Deni Tokunai
New Zealand
http://www.thenational.com.pg/071707/letter3.htm
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I would like Mel Togolo, country manger for Nautilus Minerals, to provide the public with information on the hydrodynamics of deep water mass movements.
I am saddened that such information is not readily available.
I have been visiting the Nautilus website as a concerned citizen to see if there is any mention of hydrodynamic analysis because such information should be disseminated and circulated widely.
As you are aware, PNG as a young nation, suffers from a knowledge gap in scientific fields such as this. For that reason, I called together a group of colleagues, who are frontier scientists developing the partially floating runway in Tokyo Bay, a superstructure involving a great engineering feat.
It will extend the Hanade International airport over the sea.
My colleagues have spent three years doing intensive numerical simulation of water mass movements as well as comprehensive environmental impact assessments that integrate ecological, hydrodynamic and hydrological models.
I asked them about deep sea mining especially the methods proposed by Nautilus, and the response was that without any hydrodynamic simulation and intensive field surveys with the use of long term sensors, it is a risk that PNG has to face.
I urge you as a representative and a son of PNG to ask the basic questions that govern deep sea mining operations.
If industrial countries such as US, Japan, China and UK poured thousands of tons of harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere thousands of kilometres away, and Pacific islands are now sinking, what is the guarantee that mining hundreds of metres of the seabed floor will have no influence on the coastal ecosystem in 50 years time?
What scientific guarantee can Nautilus provide for the people of PNG apart from the word of world scholars?