Buyat Bay : Newmont’s Case
Introduction
PT Newmont Minahasa Raya (NMR) is a joint venture company between Newmont Gold Company (USA), which owns 80 percent of the shares, and PT Tanjung Serapung (Indonesia) holding 20 percent. PT. NMR is located in South East Minahasa, some 80 km south of Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi. PTNMR operated an open pit mine from 1996 and ceased operations in 2001 after the deposit was recovered . They started producing gold in 1996 and began dispose their whole tailings through the pipe into Buyat Bay.
In 2004, the Newmont Minahasa Raya gold mine began closing down its operations in North Sulawesi leaving local communities in Buyat Bay and Ratatotok with a long lasting environmental damage, economic decline, and a huge of health problems.
Environmental Issue
Since the beginning of their project development in early 1993, NMR has tried to convince to the local public communities that their standard practices and operation would be environmentally saved and has been practically & widely carried out around the world of mining. Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) was conducted by NMR to support their future project but the effectiveness was questionable. Mean while the design stage and during project implementation was carried out differently against the EIA.
Tailing dumping
What local communities worried about have aroused after the operation of NMR. As commonly practiced in gold mining operation, tailing as dangerous materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the worthless fraction of an ore , should have been disposed to beneath of the sea, under the thermocline layer. But in fact, in Newmont ‘s case, as many as 2000 tons/day of tailings were piped by NMR to the bottom of the Buyat Bay in 82 metres, far enough as many scientist argued . Coastal dumping of tailings is a grave ecological concern because coastal waters are biologically the richest parts of the oceans, and because many open-ocean species depend
PT Newmont Minahasa Raya (NMR) is a joint venture company between Newmont Gold Company (USA), which owns 80 percent of the shares, and PT Tanjung Serapung (Indonesia) holding 20 percent. PT. NMR is located in South East Minahasa, some 80 km south of Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi. PTNMR operated an open pit mine from 1996 and ceased operations in 2001 after the deposit was recovered . They started producing gold in 1996 and began dispose their whole tailings through the pipe into Buyat Bay.
In 2004, the Newmont Minahasa Raya gold mine began closing down its operations in North Sulawesi leaving local communities in Buyat Bay and Ratatotok with a long lasting environmental damage, economic decline, and a huge of health problems.
Environmental Issue
Since the beginning of their project development in early 1993, NMR has tried to convince to the local public communities that their standard practices and operation would be environmentally saved and has been practically & widely carried out around the world of mining. Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) was conducted by NMR to support their future project but the effectiveness was questionable. Mean while the design stage and during project implementation was carried out differently against the EIA.
Tailing dumping
What local communities worried about have aroused after the operation of NMR. As commonly practiced in gold mining operation, tailing as dangerous materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the worthless fraction of an ore , should have been disposed to beneath of the sea, under the thermocline layer. But in fact, in Newmont ‘s case, as many as 2000 tons/day of tailings were piped by NMR to the bottom of the Buyat Bay in 82 metres, far enough as many scientist argued . Coastal dumping of tailings is a grave ecological concern because coastal waters are biologically the richest parts of the oceans, and because many open-ocean species depend
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