Hidden Valley mine report reveals poor environmental management

The Hidden Valley mine in Papua New Guinea, owned by Newcrest Mining and Harmony Gold, has caused serious environmental damage to the Watut river and the Department of Environment and Conservation has failed in its role as a regulator. These are the conclusions drawn from an independent scientific report released last week.

The Independent Environmental Performance Audit, produced by the Australian consultancy company Snowy Mountains Engineering (SMEC) paints a very poor picture of management standards, cost cutting and a failure to implement approved plans at the Hidden Valley mine. The report reveals:

• Mine activities have released high level of sedimentation into the Watut River system.
• Elevated levels of arsenic, cobalt, lead, manganese, iron, mercury and free cyanide have been released into the river
• Even the sewage treatment systems is overloaded and unable to treat wastewater to permit standards causing pathogenic risk to river communities that rely on the water system downstream
• Soil and erosion control measures have not been fully implemented across the mine site and there are significant erosion issues associated with unstable slopes and waste dumps
• Waste management is not done in accordance with the waste Management Plan and there is no waste register or evidence that waste minimization and reuse programs have been fully implemented
• The landfill is poorly located and managed, and poses an ongoing environmental risk.
• Monitoring, quality assurance and training procedures have been poorly implemented.

As a result of these failures the environmental impacts that are noted in the report include:

• Water quality in the Watut river has deteriorated and is a potential health risk
• Fish and prawn communities have been depleted
• Significant impacts on aquatic ecology

The conquences of the mine failures on local people are acute. They are having to find alternative water sources for drinking and domestic uses, have lost important food and protein sources and have lost income sources.

The report also reveals the failures of the Department of Environment and Conservation to adequately police the mine operations and its inability to take effective action once the environmental problems were exposed. DEC also failed to properly assess the mine’s social and environmental impacts prior to issuing an environmental permit, even though an increase in the potential sediment load to the Watut River was revealed in the mine’s Environmental Impact Statement.

SMEC was originally engaged by DEC in December 2009, almost one year after people started petitioning the government over the mine’s impacts but even then no action was taken by DEC on the initial report findings until November 2010 and, again, only as a result of pressure from local landholders and their MP.