Health - case exemple Buyat
The Buyat Bay case of Submarine Tailings Disposal by PT Newmont Minahasa Raya

In 1996, the American owned gold mining company PT. Newmont Minahasa Raya (NMR) started dumping its mine waste into the coastal area of Buyat Bay, a four hours drive south of North Sulawesi’s provincial capital Manado. Through a controversial disposal method known as Submarine Tailings Disposal (STD), effectively banned in the USA and Canada, NMR dumped 2,000 tons of tailings each day (USA effectively bans application of STD under the Clean Water Act) . In the past five years, Newmont has dumped some 2.8 million tons of tailings into Buyat Bay.

The tailings were disposed of through a pipe that runs from the Mesel pit to the shore and then from the shore 8,000 meters into Buyat Bay and are discharged at a depth of 82 meters below the sea level. The company always stated there is a thermocline layer that would keep the tailings at the sea bottom, preventing contamination of the shallow waters. The local people have been left in the dark about the details of the environmental impact assessment (AMDAL) of the company’s operation.

Only four months after the tailings disposal started local fisherfolks already complained about a decrease in their fish catch. By the year 1997, fish diversity in the bay has decreased from 59 species before Newmont came to only 13 species.(Participatory study undertaken jointly by Buyat community and WALHI North Sulawesi chapter, 1997.) Two years after tailing disposal started, the fisherfolk around the bay had suffered an income loss of 80%.

By 1999, many people in Buyat Bay started experiencing strange illnesses like severe headache, limp, skin swelling, and paralisation. The case of pollution was brought into public by the death of Andini, a four months old baby, who was born with skin rashes over the body. Andini’s mother was diagnosed by a medical team of the University of Indonesia, concluding she had excessive amounts of mercury in her blood. Another medical diagnose conducted by Medical Emergency Response-Centre (MER-C) showed that 80% of the children around Buyat Bay were sick with various illnesses such as lungs tuberculose, Lipoma, Parese, Myalgia/arthritis, Dermatitis, Cephalgia, etc.( MER-C data, August 2004.)

In November 2004 an integral study commission under the guidance of the Ministry of Environment found that levels of arsenic and mercury in the fish in Buyat Bay posed health risks for the local community, especially for children. It recommended that villagers should reduce their fish consumption and that the possibility should be considered of moving the community out of Buyat Bay. Around 300 people live on the shores of the bay and depend on fishing for their main protein supply and their livelihoods.

The study also found that:

• There is no protective thermocline layer - a temperature gradient below which the colder denser salt water cannot rise to the surface - contrary to Newmont's claims in its environmental impact assessment. Newmont says a thermocline layer at 50-70 metres depth would act as a barrier to keep the tailings from spreading into the biological productive layers nearer the surface in Buyat Bay.
• Newmont's dumping of mine waste into the sea breached Government Regulation No 19/1994 on Dangerous and Toxic Waste Management, plus two other regulations issued in 1999 (No.19 and No. 85).
• Since Newmont's waste dumping has had an impact on marine life in Buyat Bay, Newmont and the government should monitor the situation over the next 30 years or until Buyat Bay recovers naturally.
• Ocean dumping of waste should not be used in future.
• Some of the Joint Team results matched previous NGO, government and academic investigations

The Indonesian government finally announced Newmont have been polluting the Buyat Bay and illegally dumping waste into Buyat Bay waters. The government filed a court case against Newmont in 2005 demanding a compensation payment of US$117 million. In June 2005, 67 families of Buyat Bay decided to relocate to Duminanga to escape the pollution that destroyed their environment, health, and livelihoods. Newmont in an out of court decision in 2005 agreed to pay compensation to the Indonesian government of 30 mio. USDollars. At least six Newmont Mining managers, including an American and an Australian, face up to 15 years in a Jakarta prison for environmental and corporate crime in that case.Source: Mining Advocacy Network JATAM, Jakarta, 2005