By Pratap Chatterjee
TIMIKA, Indonesia, Feb 8 1996 (IPS)

Agnes Amai died three weeks ago in the settlement of Koperapoka, just outside this mining town. Her brothers say that abscesses developed on her face and armpits a day or two before she collapsed.

“It happened just after she collected some food at Payefe where the contamination from the Freeport’s copper and gold mine is very heavy,” claims Amatus Amai, her brother.

But U.S.-based company Freeport McMoRan that operates the mine, vehemently refutes the often repeated charge made by indigenous peoples living in a 300 km stretch of swamp forests near to a major gold and copper mining operation.

“The reports of ‘mystery diseases’ have been investigated by our medical experts, by government medical experts and by journalists such as yourself,” wrote Edward Pressman, spokesman for Freeport Indonesia’s head office in Jakarta in a faxed statement to IPS.

He added: “In each authoritative investigation, there has been no evidence that anything Freeport is doing in carrying out its mining operations has anything to do with real or perceived health problems.”

The New Orleans company operates the world’s largest gold mine and third largest copper mine, some 90 kms away from this town which is located in the hot lowland swamps of southern Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea.

The mine’s operations are at elevations of more than 4,000 metres above sea-level in the central highlands of this island — the highest point between the Andes and the Himalayas.

Vast quantities of ore-bearing rock are crushed, mixed with water and other additives, to allow the metals to float to the surface, and then the waste is discharged into local rivers.

At present, Freeport estimates that more than 110,000 tonnes of waste a day are dumped into the Aghawaghon river which eventually merges into the Ajkwa river.

But Pressman says in addition to providing free medical care to those in need, Freeport conducts “comprehensive monitoring programmes that constantly analyse water quality”. The results are “conclusive…the tailings are not toxic and pose absolutely no health threat to the local population whatsoever…”

Flying west into Timika, which is on the banks of the river, it however appears easy to see where the discharge ends up. In contrast to the verdant and dense green that covers 90 per cent of this island a large section of the forest around the river is brown — killed by the mine, say the local people.

Amai and her brother are Komoro, an indigenous group that live in a 300 km stretch of swamp forests here. They claim their health problems have multiplied rapidly since the mine began operations 23 years ago.

“Many people have stomach aches, skin rashes and they often cough up blood. Freeport set up a clinic for us a year ago but sometimes – as in the case of my sister – there is no time to go there. She died a day after complaining of problems,” says Amai.

The Komoro say the mine has changed their lives in many ways. For centuries they have lived off “eraka” and “amena” — the local words for fish and sago palm.

“Today it is hard to find the yuaro, lifao, mufao, irao and ufurao — the traditional fish that we used to catch,” says Agapitus Maerimau, another Komoro person who lives in Nawaripi, a small community of 160 people some eight kms away.

Maerimau and his family, who used to live in Koperapoka, moved here 14 years ago when Freeport built them new houses to replace their own which were sinking. “The fish that we find tastes bitter like malaria medicine. The only fish that thrives is the mujahir, a fish from Java. The sago tastes like sand,” he says.

“We have to walk 20 kilometres from here to find food. The fish we have to buy in the Timika markets where it costs 2,000 rupiah (90 cents) for five small fish. But we have no jobs to get money,” he adds.

The Komoro peoples are not the only ones to complain about the mining activity. Also angry are the Amung people (also known as the Amungme, the name for a male Amung) who live in the 17 valleys of the highlands, where Freeport’s mine is.

The Amungme depend on “erom”, “mow” and “baw-eh” (sweet potato, taro and pig) for their food. Today, say the Amungme, the leaves of these vegetables and the skin of the pigs show strange discolouration.

“We call this ‘aspal’ because it looks black like the colour of the asphalt on the road,” says Tom Beanal, who works for Lemasa, an non-governmental organisation set up by the Amungme. “We don’t have any word for this in our language because we never saw anything like this before,” he added.

The Washington-based United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) — a political risk insurance agency — which withdrew a five-year-old, 100 million dollar insurance policy for the mine last November.

By way of explanation, Robert O’Sullivan, a lawyer for OPIC, cited environmental problems associated with “acid mine drainage …toxic metals…and the mismanagement of solid and hazardous wastes at the site,” in a letter to Freeport.

Freeport insists the charges are baseless. “The allegations of serious health problems resulting from the tailings, lodged by whomever you spoke with, are utterly false,” said Pressman.

“Regarding the knowledge of aquatic life, while the local people may possess superior knowledge of local wildlife, our diversity surveys (show that) the Ajkwa river is very similar to other river systems tested in the number of aquatic species present and the abundance of those species,” he added.

The Study and Information Centre for Papuan Peoples (PaVo) in Delft, the Netherlands, says that there is no concrete evidence one way or another on whether Freeport’s operations are toxic.

This is because there have been no independent tests for environmental quality, says PaVo. Freeport itself only began testing water quality a few years ago.

But based on Freeport’s reports of its mining activities, PaVo estimates that 20 to 40 kms of the Ajkwa river here will be hazardous to fish and humans for about 15 years. PaVo also projects that a 35 sq km area in the floodplains will be poisoned over some 35 years while a 100 sq km area of the estuary and delta will be contaminated.

Environmental experts — both at the United States Environmental Protection Agency and at Freeport’s laboratories — agree that minute concentrations of waste metals can be toxic.

“One part per million of dissolved copper can present a significant health threat to humans and animals (but) the copper concentration in the Ajkwa river has been shown to be roughly 0.007 parts per million,” says Pressman.

Pressman told IPS that an independent environmental audit of the mine conducted by Dames and Moore, an international consultancy, would soon be available.

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