Time to correct misconceptions, says mining exec

BAGUIO City—Mining engineers are generally “poor communicators,” Artemio Disini, president of the Philippine Chamber of Mines, admitted.

But he said it is time to correct misconceptions about big mining and to communicate these to clarify what he described as mainly “misinformation, half-truths, if not outright propaganda” by many nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and antimining groups.

“Currently, there are approximately 30 large-scale metallic and 2,100 small-scale mines. Only large-scale mines are subject to attacks from nongovernment organizations and antimining groups,” he told a symposium of the 58th Annual National Mine Safety and Environment conference here on Thursday.

Hosted by the Philippine Society of Mining Engineers in partnership with Philippine Mine Safety and Environment Association, the symposium highlighted the industry’s “best practices” in rehabilitation, integrated management systems and meeting international environmental standards.

“They (antimining groups) say large-scale mining is destructive and causes environmental degradation,” Disini said. “It also affects agriculture, ecotourism and fishery. It is reported that large-scale mining displaces indigenous peoples.”

Such claims are reinforced by a “misconception,” which, he said, NGOs have been repeating: 12 million hectares, or 40 percent of the total land mass of the country, will be mined.

Mindset

“This is the misconception that is the mindset of even high government officials in the Cabinet level,” he said. “It is always pointed out that large-scale miners will mine about 80 percent of Palawan.”

These are not the actual facts, he said. The area to be impacted by 30 operating mines will “only be 60,000 hectares, or 0.2 percent of the total land area,” Disini said.

“The footprint of these mines is only 9,700 hectares, or 0.03 percent of the total land area,” Disini said.

This “small footprint will not affect agriculture,” he said. Disini cited two mining companies in Benguet that are not competing with vegetable farming.

Neither does big mining affect the fishing industry, he said. He cited Palawan’s Rio Tuba, a mining operation 236 kilometers away from Puerto Princesa City and 286 kilometers from St. Paul Underground River.

This mining operation is too far to affect Palawan’s fishing and ecotourism industries, Disini said.

“On pollution, all mining companies with processing plants have tailings dams to impound their tailings,” he said. “Nickel mines feature progressive rehabilitation and reforestation in their operations.”

A former president of Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co., Disini said NGOs and other groups opposed to big-scale mining “simply don’t want development.”

“Part of the Left’s advocacy is for people to remain poor so (this situation) helps in their ultimate agenda to take over the government,” Disini said.

A day before the big mining firms met in Camp John Hay, opposition groups led by the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) held a forum at the People’s Park here to articulate what they described as the “myth of safe and responsible mining.”

The CPA cited the “sinking, landslide and ground subsidence” 10 years ago in the villages of Colalo, Tabak, Bulalacao and Sapid and in Poblacion later in 2009 in Mankayan, Benguet, where Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. has been operating for over 70 years.

The group also said the death and destruction wrought by Typhoon “Pepeng” in 2009 could be largely linked to mined-out communities in Itogon, Benguet, where Benguet Corp. has been operating for over 100 years, and in Tublay, also in Benguet, where Sto. Nino Mines once operated.

It also cited the 2002 and 2003 findings by the independent Save the Abra River Movement (STARM), which linked the decrease in crop yield and death of domestic animals and freshwater fish to high levels of toxic wastes dumped into the Abra River.

Toxic waste

The toxic wastes must have been due the collapse of a spillway of Lepanto mines in July 1999, according to STARM.

The findings also noted the stunted growth of crops and vegetation, which was attributed to the operation of Lepanto’s copper dryer.

Lepanto had denied the claims of STARM and CPA, saying their reports lacked scientific basis. It also said the reported sinking and subsidence were due to earthquake fault lines and not because of mining.

Despite their opposition to what they described as the destructive environmental impact of big mining, antibig-scale mining groups such as the CPA support a newly filed bill in the House of Representatives dubbed “People’s Mining Bill of 2011.”

Filed in March this year by Party-list Representatives Teddy Casino, Neri Colmenares, Rafael Mariano, Luzviminda Ilagan, Raymond Palatino, Emerenciana de Jesus and Antonio Tinio, House Bill 4315 seeks to develop a mining industry “within the framework of national industrialization and genuine agrarian reform.”

The bill provides for a centralized and strategic plan of the mining industry by creating and implementing a National Industrialization Program and National Mining Plan.

“The said program and plan shall work for the country’s self-sufficiency, optimum benefit for the national and local economy, public participation and representation in mining,” said the bill proponents.