By Pratap Chatterjee
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 4 1998 (IPS)

The plans of a U.S. company to establish a phosphate mine in Sri Lanka need to be closely examined in the light of similar experiences at a mine in Florida – where thousands of acres of land have been ruined – say local activists and international environmental experts.

The 425 million dollar project, proposed by the US-based Freeport McMoRan Resource Partners, IMC Agrico and Japan’s Tomen Corporation, involves a major new mine, which will be situated near the Sri Lankan town of Eppawala. A fertiliser plant also is planned for a site near the eastern port city of Trincomalee.

The scheme covers an area of 56 square kilometres of land, but means re-locating some 12,000 villagers from 26 villages. Buddhist temples, schools and a large number of government buildings also face destruction, according to environmentalists.

Project officials told IPS that they would conduct studies next year to determine the feasibility and the impact of the mine but a number of Sri Lankan farmers already have registered opposition to the project. A coalition of Buddhist priests, farmers, former politicians and ex-soldiers also have told President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga that they oppose the the deal.

“We will not leave; the government will have to use soldiers to remove us from our homes,” Mahamannakadawata Piyarathana, a Buddhist monk and president of the Committee for the Protection of Phosphate Deposits, told journalists.

In the United States, however, Sri Lankan ambassador Warnesena Rasaputram, brushed aside the furore over establishing the mine. “I wouldn’t worry about the protests. There are people who protest against mines in every country. The Board of Investment has already carried out studies and we only have to finalise the conditions for the investment,” he told IPS in Washington.

Peter Maples, vice-president of business development for IMC- Agrico, says that studies have yet to begin. “We expect to release details of the project in the New Year and conduct feasibility studies soon.”

Maples added that the company will maintain the standards that the company has met in Florida. “We are not going to try and do anything different in Sri Lanka from what we do in Florida. The state has very high environmental standards and we will try and apply the same,” he said.

But North American scientists point out that the environmental impact of phosphate mining in Florida, where IMC- Agrico unearths a third of the United States phosphate output, has been significant.

More than 200,000 acres of the southern state have been strip- mined, leaving behind land that looks like a car race track after heavy rains, filled with pits and gullies and mini-mountains of dirt and thousand-hectare slime pits.

Some 20 stacks of phosphogypsum, a waste material from phosphate mining, that tower ten stories high occupy 400 acres of the Florida landscape.

Accidents happen often in the industry, despite strict regulation. Earlier this month, some 50 million gallons of highly toxic phosphoric acid water was discharged into the Alfia river by Mulberry Phosphates and killed thousands of fish.

In November 1994, a new IMC-Agrico dam broke, causing 500 million gallons of waste water to be dumped in the same region just weeks after an older dam owned by Mobile Mining and Minerals burst dumping 2 million gallons of waste water into the Alfia.

Freeport has also been cited for dumping radioactive gypsum into the Mississipi river in Louisiana where the company has its headquarters.

Today, says Peter Vanderslice, the manager of the phosphate division of the Florida Division of Environmental Protection, the companies have been asked to sign agreements to further strengthen engineering standards because the state does not believe that the exisiting precautions are sufficient.

“Companies will have until the year 2000 to cover up the waste stacks to prevent rainwater from entering. From that year all new stacks will have to be built with a double liner to prevent groundwater contamination,” he says.

One of the reasons that dumping waste into local waterways is banned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is because phosphogypsum has been shown to contain elevated levels of radium which eventually breaks down into radon, both radioactive gases, and there are no safe methods to store or treat the waste.

The EPA says that radium is a human carcinogen, with additional risks for women who become susceptible to breast cancer. Unfortunately, the agency says, measuring exposure is very difficult even with special equipment.

Studies by Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan Inc for the Florida Institute for Phosphate Research (FIPR) indicate that radioactivity concentrations measured in foods grown on mined phosphate lands were found to be statistically higher than in foods grown on other lands.

Other studies in 27 Florida counties have shown that cancer rates in phosphate mining areas are three times higher than those in unmined areas while people who live in houses built on previously mined areas have a higher risk of getting cancer.

Today Vanderslice says that new houses in mined areas are now required to have a special vapour layer between the land and the building in order to prevent radioactive contamination.

Another impact of this mining is a major increase in mosquito populations in the pits and settling ponds created by the phosphate mining industry, which become infested with water hyacinth and water lettuce, attracting large populations of mosquitoes.

Yet another hazard of the associated fertilizer production includes major safety problems because of extremely frequent explosions involved in the manufacturing process.

For example in a sample period of the first half of 1991 seven people were killed in Charleston, South Carolina, explosion at a phosphate manufacturing plant while eight people were killed in Sterlington, Louisiana, when a fertilizer plant blew up

Death and environmental destruction also has accompanied Freeport McMoRan’s other major international operation on the island of New Guinea in the South Pacific. There Freeport is the target of a six billion dollar lawsuit for the dumping of 130,000 tonnes of toxic mining waste into local rivers every single day.

In addition Freeport is under scrutiny for human rights abuses because more than 2,000 people, opposed the New Guinea mine, have died violently at the hands of security forces over the past two decades.

Excerpt:

By Pratap Chatterjee
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 4 1998 (IPS)

The plans of a U.S. company to establish a phosphate mine in Sri Lanka need to be closely examined in the light of similar experiences at a mine in Florida – where thousands of acres of land have been ruined – say local activists and international environmental experts.

The 425 million dollar project, proposed by the US-based Freeport McMoRan Resource Partners, IMC Agrico and Japan’s Tomen Corporation, involves a major new mine, which will be situated near the Sri Lankan town of Eppawala. A fertiliser plant also is planned for a site near the eastern port city of Trincomalee.

The scheme covers an area of 56 square kilometres of land, but means re-locating some 12,000 villagers from 26 villages. Buddhist temples, schools and a large number of government buildings also face destruction, according to environmentalists.

Project officials told IPS that they would conduct studies next year to determine the feasibility and the impact of the mine but a number of Sri Lankan farmers already have registered opposition to the project. A coalition of Buddhist priests, farmers, former politicians and ex-soldiers also have told President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga that they oppose the the deal.

“We will not leave; the government will have to use soldiers to remove us from our homes,” Mahamannakadawata Piyarathana, a soldiers to remove us from our homes,” Mahamannakadawata Piyara

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