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The country’s leading environmental group has accused the world’s largest gold miner of polluting a coastal area of Sumbawa Island in West Nusa Tenggara by dumping its tailings into the sea.
The Batu Hijau copper and gold mine is operated by Newmont Nusa Tenggara, the local arm of US mining behemoth Newmont Mining Corporation. Ahmad Junaidi, a member of the local branch of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said on Tuesday that NNT had been dumping 120,000 tons of tailings into Sumbawa’s Senunu Bay daily since 2000. He said the activity was to blame for the reduced catches reported by fishermen and posed a major threat to the health of communities living around the bay. “That threat becomes very real when the pipes that carry the tailings out to sea spring a leak, and that has happened before,” he said. Walhi previously accused another Newmont subsidiary, Newmont Minahasa Raya, of dumping 20,000 tons of tailings a day into Buyat Bay on Sulawesi Island. The company faced both civil and criminal suits in Jakarta. However, the civil suit was dismissed in 2005, and the company’s top American executive was acquitted of all criminal charges two years later.
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