Panguna mine report set to reveal severe damage and threat to communities

A full report into the impact of the Panguna Mine in Bougainville is to be made public later this month.

The mine in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region was the catalyst for the nearly ten-year long civil war through the 1990s.

Multinational miner Rio Tinto has funded research into the human rights and environmental damage caused by the mine.

A draft report has confirmed significant damage and ongoing threats.

The Australian Human Rights Law Centre has been working with the local community and its spokesperson Keren Adams talked with Don Wiseman.

Keren Adams: The full report will be made public in late November. At the moment, what's been presented to communities are some high-level draft findings in relation to the report, in order to get their feedback, so that that can then be incorporated as well into the final report.

But what's already clear from those findings is that many of the things that communities have been expressing as serious matters of concern for them for a long time have been validated by the report. Things like chemicals that have been left behind by the mine, collapsing levees, and infrastructure. It's not as though a report was needed in terms of understanding that there was damage.

It's immediately apparent to anyone going to the site -where you have almost a billion tonnes of tailings waste dumped directly into a river valley, where you have a situation where a mine has never been properly closed, and has been left as it was when it was abandoned in 1989 - that you will have major environmental and safety risks that result from both the original dumping, and the way that the waste was disposed itself. But also from the deterioration of the site over time because none of that clean-up has ever happened.

You have things like, over by the port, you have large tanks, for example, of chemicals and fuel, and things left from the time of the mine's operation. Some of those are now in a deteriorating condition. And you have things like leaks happening, for example, from some of the big fuel tanks over there. Similarly, with the levees which were constructed at the time of the mine's operation to try and contain some of that tailings waste from eroding further into the river, a lot of those have already collapsed, and some are in the process of collapsing. You have these large amounts of tailings continually being washed into the rivers and downstream.

These are things that communities have known and experienced over a lengthy amount of time, but there's obviously been no proper environmental and scientific studies done on the mine since the time of its operation.

It was very important to have a study of this kind; firstly, to map all of the different impacts that are being experienced, but more importantly, to lay the basis for potential solutions to these problems.

There are things that, undoubtedly, will come out of this study that will be new information for communities about precisely the nature of the risks and impacts that they're living with. The study looked at things like contamination of the soil or in different sites around the mine and the infrastructure from the mine. It looked at what are the current levels of copper and other heavy metals in the river. Now, all of these kinds of things have been the subject of this study and will be canvassed in much more detail when the full report is released next month.

Don Wiseman: Clearly, this draft report is showing things that need to be remedied immediately, if possible, don't they?

KA: There's absolutely a range of different things that pose serious risks for local people. I'd highlight some of the collapsing infrastructure and the collapsing levees, which are causing major problems.

Over the course of our time working with communities, we have had people already report deaths to us of community members through things like people trying to cross the rivers. We have had other people who have had kids fall into the river and swallow river water and become incredibly sick.

There's already been reported deaths from the community and other near-death situations as a result of the quite dangerous conditions that people find themselves living in.

DW: You would imagine, given that you've had 30 odd years or longer of poisons accumulating in the soil that there will have been quite a lot of illness through this region that's never been monitored.

KA: I think that's one of the things that remains to be seen from this report. I have to say, that the health impacts are always some of the most difficult and complex issues to look at because it requires looking at the actual sources of contamination and the pathways in which people may be exposed to them.

Then ultimately, what kinds of things people are experiencing. People definitely have reported illnesses as a result of what they believe is exposure to the contamination. For example, people talk frequently about skin conditions, particularly on their legs and arms, from when they spend time in the rivers. People talk also about respiratory problems and gastro problems that result from kids swimming in the rivers and a range of other health complications. Women who are pregnant also report frequent infections when they spend time panning for gold in the rivers. There's a range of different things that need to be looked at. I don't think that this report is looking at some of the most acute and serious health and other risks that have been reported by communities. But it's not the full investigation. There will need to be some areas where there will need to be further investigations undertaken, undoubtedly.

I don't think that we are going to end up with all of the answers at this point, but hopefully it will provide a very important, useful starting point for discussion about, firstly, what needs to be done now and then, secondly, what further investigations need to take place.

DW: Rio Tinto, as we were saying earlier, had funded this investigation. Will they be willing to continue to fund it through the next stages? Has there been any commitment along those lines?

KA: Rio Tinto have put out a recent statement on their website that says that they are fully committed to ensuring that they comply with their human rights and environmental obligations and that they are committed to the Panguna mine legacy impact assessment process.

They have also said that they are seeking to enter into discussions with relevant stakeholders in relation to a remedy framework. Those are all positive signs from our perspective, but in terms of understanding exactly what Rio Tinto will do that remains to be seen.

DW: Now separately, there is this issue of several 1000 landowners who are suing Rio Tinto, unrelated to what your group is doing. Do you think that will impact on what you people are doing?

KA: We hope it won't. I mean, certainly this process has the support of all of the kind of key stakeholders working on the ground from the Bougainville government, the Papua New Guinea government, a lot of the community and clan leaders in the area.

It's a process that's been undertaken with buy-in from not just the communities, but also from other kind of key stakeholders in Bougainville and the region.

But I guess we will have to see how those legal proceedings play out. As I understand it, they are in very early stages. They have only had their first preliminary hearing to set a timetable for the matter. We don't have a good sense yet as to exactly how those proceedings are going to play out.