Thursday 6 June 2013

Trouble in Paradise

Kayaking Watut River - Picture courtesy of gradientandwater
“If not corrected quickly, this will become a significant issue for the people who use and rely on the Watut River System for their existence.”
The first thing that springs to mind when you hear of the Watut River, is white water rapids, copious amounts of rushing, fast flowing water and the wild outdoors, but this is only one face of this amazing river system that travels over 100 km, through several electoral boundaries and over terrain that is breathtaking in one instant and serene and moody in the next.
The many faces that make the Watut experience begin at Hidden Valley, in clear mountain top creeks that are the headwaters of this mighty river, where once fed by torrential rains it starts its extraordinary journey. There the creek quickly builds up its volume of water, progressively draining other creeks and tributaries and the torrent becomes an impressive river in a heartbeat. Over its 100 or so kilometers course the Watut changes its character many times as it moves down a geographical fall of some 8,000 feet or 2,500m between its headwaters and the lower Watut. It slows only once it reaches the flood plains where it meanders to join the great Markham River. The journey continues on only another 10 or so kilometre to where the Markham finally empties into the Huon Gulf disgorging its cumulative brackish contents of water and silt in a plume that extends some 20km out to sea.
This remarkable river, known the world over as one of the toughest white water courses, flows through the Bulolo and Huon Gulf electorates of the Morobe Province. It provides for a vast number of communities along its entire length, even at the headwaters some 8,000 feet above sea level. As the river reaches the Watut plains it slows and broadens, winding its way to the Markham confluence and here a myriad of aquatic marvels exist from the flora that shrouds its banks to the fauna that in some species, exist only in this part of the world.
It is home to the Watut and Mumeng people of Bulolo and the Babuaf of the Huon Gulf giving sustenance to communities in the form of food, water, recreation, transport and gold. The Watut River is an important feature to these rural people.
But there is trouble brewing in paradise. This picture of a pristine wilderness is under threat and the river system has been taking a beating, literally, for the last two years by a sinister force which is both seen and unseen and whose presence is quickly emerging under the guise of development for the region. Unfortunately, the future of this once-awesome waterway looks increasingly bleak. The natural beauty of the Watut River is quickly being compromised by waste material from the construction of the Hidden Valley Gold Mine. The mine is operated by Morobe Mining Joint Ventures which is the operating entity for international mining partners Harmony Gold of South Africa and Australia's Newcrest Mining Limited.
Since September 2007, the Watut River has been subjected to inordinate quantities of waste rock and debris as run-off from the river's headwaters where the Hidden Valley Gold Mine is situated.
To date, some 50 million tones of earth have been excavated from the top of the mine's main pit area and vast amounts have ended up in the river as debris from the deliberate practice of side-casting. The problem of degradation in the Watut actually develops from an act of god, which being the extraordinarily high rainfall patterns in this region of the world. Up to 10m in one year is not usual and as a tropical rainforest zone, the abundance of precipitation has become both friend and foe for this great waterway.
Early last year (2009), the telltale signs of environmental damage to the lower Watut waterways began to emerge in places an under circumstances the developers of Hidden Valley Gold Mine claimed would not occur. Up until that point every communication made to communities near and beside the Watut River professed that MMJV had the situation under control and that damage along the course of the Watut system was minimal. It publicly stated through its environment and community affairs officers that according to its studies of the Watut River and models it based its Environmental Management Plan on, very little damage would visit the Middle and Lower Watut regions and if any was to occur, it would be of little consequence and only temporary.
Unfortunately what is now becoming clearer by the day is that these claims could not be further from the truth. As demonstrated in the Fly River experience, a latent but permanent by-product of mining in PNG that discharge waste into waterways with a flood basin is a phenomenon called dieback.
The destruction caused in this phenomenon is not temporary nor is it manageable, unless retention mechanisms are developed at the mine site itself for the fifth side-cast in the mines pit clearing process. According to experts, if not corrected quickly, this matter will become a significant issue for the people who use and rely on the Watut River system for their existence.
Sedimentation and silting of the levels being observed in the lower Watut can only be possible if there is an inundation of suspended material in the water itself. The dynamics of laden water is that it will slow where the gradient permits, enabling sediments to settle. To stand on solid landfill where once there was over a meter of moving water and marshland indicates someone has not done their homework. This clogging up of important aquatic systems will have rolling repercussions as the habitat for aquatic fauna is destroyed, important flora used by river communities die and navigable waterways disappear.
According to scientists; even within MMJV, this phenomenon would migrate along the lower Watut River unless structures to mitigate sediment inputs at Hidden Valley are constructed. In the absence of these structures, the problem will continue to grow.
Adding to this dilemma is the pathetic lack of action from Department of Environment which has done little to monitor the activities of the mine. Whether by design or from lack of resources, the stringency of the Environment Act of 2000          is directly held to question as clearly the department has simply allowed the developer to self-regulate its own actions. Though unacceptable, this is unfortunately the norm in PNG, much to the detriment of the rural communities to which the department has a moral and ethical obligation to protect. Engineered dams called toes designed to contain and manage run-off from Hidden Valley and Kaveroi still have not been constructed nor have many of the systems designed to monitor the impacts of the mine been commissioned. Yet the Department of Environment confirms “stringent” compliance by the developer. A statement provided by the Minister for Environment on August 14, 2009 simply corroborated information provided by MMJV with a footnote to say the matter would be looked at in due curse.
The provincial government too has muddied the waters further, so to speak, with the chairman of its mining committee, Benson Suwang describing the situation as simply "collateral damage".
The concern for communities now is MMJV's continued insistence that it has the situation under control when clearly its experts have been wrong. Without a commitment to include these communities within the mine impact zone, the matter would simply be passed from one study to the next until it is forgotten just as it has for the Western province.
The impacts of damage done and being done to the environment especially in the Middle and Lower Watut will be felt for a Iong time and will affect generations of communities living along the waterway. The current compensation regime for Hidden Valley does not and will not consider the claims outside an exclusive mine impact zone which means our concerns will be passed over. Without the Department of Environment's intervention little will be made of this issue and the suffering of the affected communities will simply go unheard.
The people of Bulolo and Huon Gulf who are custodians of this remarkable river system deserve better from MMJV, Harmony Gold and Newcrest Mining. They deserve better from the Department of Environment and Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) and they certainly deserve better from the Morobe Provincial Government. By now the lessons learned from the development of other mines and especially, from the Ok Tedi experience and Wau Bulolo Historical old Rush should have armed the relevant agencies of State with the means to recognize instances of breach or a shortfall in compliance and move to correct them. It is the least that these communities should expect from government.
The Union of Watut River Communities Association Incorporated (UoWRCA Inc) is the only party to have made a commitment not to let this matter rest and intends to fully explore available options to the affected people and communities to seek redress.
 
God Bless
REUBEN METE (Mr.)
President
Union of Watut River Communities Association Incorporated

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