22 May 2020

A coalition of more than 5,000 villagers and a provincial government in Papua New Guinea has built a legal challenge against the world’s most productive battery nickel plant.

The company, Ramu NiCo, has been dumping millions of tons of mine waste into the ocean since 2012, and evidence for environmental and health impacts is accumulating.

[...]

In April 2019, a small coastal tailings spill prompted Governor Yama to examine Ramu NiCo’s nearly eight-year environmental record. He hired a consultant that engaged SVQ to undertake an environmental impact assessment, which Mojon’s 13-person team began in May 2019.

[...] [A]fter one round of spot testing coastal soils, Mojon recommended that Ramu NiCo implement a plan to recycle and neutralize tailings or find an alternative waste management method. By November, three more field studies and three more slurry spills later, he began calling Ramu NiCo’s DSTD a “catastrophe.”

The SVQ data have fueled a battle over research between the provincial government and locals on one side, and the central government and Ramu NiCo on the other. Ramu NiCo, MCC and Toronto-based Conic Metals (which acquired Highlands Pacific) have not responded to questions. Conic said in a statement that it was not a defendant in the case and that operations are continuing normally.

[...]

Although SVQ's study is incomplete, Mojon said he believes the evidence he's gathered so far is clear: the sea, coasts, some food crops, and one natural spring used for drinking water show "alarmingly high levels of contamination." The study is potentially one of the largest to date on the impacts of DSTD anywhere in the world.

[...]