ENVIRONMENT-CARIBBEAN: Jamaican Bauxite Mines Restored to Farming

By Zadie Neufville Reprint | | Print |

Zadie Neufville

KINGSTON, May 19 2001 (IPS) - For many Jamaicans, life near a bauxite mine is a matter of noise, dust, and the agony of being forced from land that has been in the family for generations only to see it scarred – seemingly for life.

Dorrel Morris and Roy Kennedy, however, complain only that they need more land on which to grow their crops, a problem they say will be fixed when Mr. Richards arrives.

Mansfield Richards is Alcan Jamaica’s officer in charge of tenant farmers and land recovery. Morris and Kennedy are two of the more than 30 tenant farmers eking a living on 150 hectares of land reclaimed from bauxite mines in Barrissa, a district in the centre of the southern coastal parish of Manchester.

Both men are farming on lands that have been restored to agricultural use after yielding all it had to give the miners. By law, mine operators must return the landscape to its original condition, or as close to that as possible, when they are done with mining.

Barrissa represents a small portion of the more than 1,500 hectares restored by the Jamaican unit of Alcan, the Canada-based multinational. Hilary Coulton, a spokesperson for the Jamaica Bauxite Institute, said a total of 3,318 hectares of land has been reclaimed since bauxite mining began here in 1951.

Bauxite is the second largest earner of foreign exchange, generating 726 million dollars last year from which government earned 68 million in taxes.

Most of the restored lands are used for cattle rearing, farming and residential purposes. Farmers say the mined lands no longer support the traditional crop varieties once grown on them.

Kennedy and Morris, who farmed these lands before they were mined, are using new varieties of yam, dasheen and corn they once planted. They are now reaping their first crop.

“I can’t afford to buy the land here to farm so I am leasing this piece and I’m happy,” 68-year-old Morris said of the 2.5 hectares he tills. Land is scarce in Manchester and its price is being pushed up by large numbers of retirees returning to Jamaica from overseas.

Gigantic trucks and machinery stir dust and reduce visibility outside the wire fence that separates what he calls his “garden” from the road on which the monsters race by laden with ore from adjacent mines.

Morris and the other men said they are only too willing to endure the dust and noise in exchange for the use of the land.

It all seems modest but getting to this point has been no easy task.

To begin with, the open cast method of mining practised here requires large-scale removal of topsoil and vegetation. This could be the cause of the abnormal rainfall and prolonged droughts experienced in recent years in Manchester and neighbouring St. Elizabeth, says Oral Rainford, a government geologist.

The removal of ore left gaping holes and scarred the surrounding hillsides. Anthony Porter, Alcan’s geologist, says the holes have to be filled, the land contoured and graded so it is as close as possible to its original state. It is then covered by about 38 centimetres of topsoil and seeded with pasture grass. The land must then pass a government inspection before it can be declared restored.

In 1985, Alcan began looking for ways to recycle millions of litres of red mud created during the processing of bauxite. Mud lakes measuring between 40 and 48.5 hectares were used to accommodate the thick caustic sludge from the bauxite processing plants.

The first lakes were mined-out holes. Usually, they were unlined – resulting in the contamination of groundwater systems. Yet, neither the lined ponds nor the dry stacking methods later used provided the answer.

Dry stacking, a method in which the mud is deposited in layers and dried, is used to make bricks in some areas. But dust from drying ponds caused health problems for nearby communities.

Alcan then restored four of the ponds by covering them with topsoil and replanting grass; cattle now graze on one of the former ponds. But according to Porter, this is no longer an acceptable alternative because of the scarcity of topsoil and the high costs involved.

So the company has begun experimenting with a new technique. On its own, the red mud does not support plant growth but Porter’s team has been mixing in gypsum to make its chemical composition more hospitable.

Several varieties of grasses, one tree species and several ferns are among the plants being grown in the new experiment.