by Catherine Delahunty
Last Monday Jeanette and I were invited to a forum on mining in Waihi. Part of the event was a tour of the open cast pit (formerly Martha Hill) and the Favona underground mine, and the tailing dam (formerly the Golden Valley).
Even though I was an objector at the first hearings to oppose that gold mine in Waihi in the mid 1980s, I had never been through the mine site. It was very interesting to see the vast hole in the centre of Waihi which may or may not become a lake, a lake that may or may not become highly acidic.
Even more fascinating was the trip into the underground gold mine dressed like the Village People, but definitely appreciating the safety features provided by the company. Inside Papatuanuku, it is grey, black and wet. The mining company is blasting most days to see if they can find three grams of gold per tonne of rock. The rock all gets treated with cyanide and crushed to extract the gold before being sent off in a slurry form to the vast tailing dump they have built down Baxters Road. The company are very good at their engineering and their PR, and they provide jobs to miners who know how to drive great big trucks and excavators and how to blow up rocks. This is a technological wonder which Newmont are only too happy to explain.
I staggered out of the pit with a new appreciation of just how clever and stupid humans are at the same time. Some one is getting very rich from this mine, but the Martha open cast pit pays no royalties to the Government. The people of Waihi live with blasting, subsidence and permanent monitoring of those tailings full of heavy metals heaped up just outside of town.
Thanks to the work Jeanette did with the distressed local residents group (DRAT), some locals are now getting some compensation for their discomfort.
It’s probably a lot better than some of the other Newmont mines around the world. Let’s hope so. You only have to Google Yanacocha or Choropampa to learn that things have been a lot less pleasant in the Peruvian mountains, with deaths and armed security firms and some nasty acid mine drainage on someone’s sacred mountain. And then there is Newmont’s work in Ghana including the displacing of the local cocoa farmers and the plan to mine in the Bepo Forest Reserves.
Why should we care? One reason is the Newmont were supposed to be going away, but the price of gold is so high they want to expand the Martha pit and are now about to prospect north of Waihi at a beautiful coastal settlement called Onemana.
So I am encouraging people in the Coromandel to be vigilant. While Waihi has endured mining for more than one hundred years, further north there little enthusiasm to replace low-impact tourism with large pits.
In the 21st century the benefits of all that ripping, digging and crushing, all that energy, fossil fuels and water contamination haven’t really made Waihi look very prosperous. As for the rest of the Hauraki-Coromandel – we need more gold mines like a hole in our hearts.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Catherine Delahunty on Mon, August 10th, 2009
Tags: Catherine Delahunty, environment, gold, mining
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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things have been a lot less pleasant in the Peruvian mountains, with deaths and armed security firms and some nasty acid mine drainage on *someone’s sacred mountain*.
*is this a fact or hyperbole?
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Got a mobile phone, Cath? How about a PC?
Might like to look at how much gold it contains…..
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Frog – I feel an opportunity has been missed and this post should have been titled “Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine”
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JH
‘In June 2000, a flatbed truck owned by the Romero Group’s transport company RANSA, under contract to Yanacocha, South America’s largest gold mine, spilled 151.5 kg, or 334 pounds, of elemental liquid mercury over a 45 kilometer, or 27 mile, stretch of highway passing through Choropampa and two neighboring towns. The mercury leaked out of improperly sealed containers.’
and
‘On 2 November, Edmundo Becerra Corina, an environmentalist and an opponent of Yanacocha’s gold mining project, was shot dead in Yanacanchilla, Cajamarca province. He had reportedly received several death threats because of his opposition to the expansion of the mining company’s activities in the region. The attack took place days before he was due to meet with representatives from the Ministry of Energy and Mines.’
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Thanks Catherine and Jeanette for visiting the site, there is nothing quite like seeing it for oneself to appreciate what our residents must have gone through for the past 20 years… for the greater good.
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What a load of codswallop! You should get your facts straight! But you dont want to do you? You are only interested in misrepresenting information that you have been given in good faith. The way you manipulate facts can make the Snow White look like Hitler. There is not going to be open cast mine in the Northern Coromandel and spreading that information in your rabid campaign is just wrong. I hope people of Coromandel will have more sense than believe everything you’ve been feeding them. If anyone want to find out more about mining look independently, plenty of good info on the internet.
And one more thing…if i hear about tourism being the way instead of mining i am going to scream! Tourism is good in the summer, but winter looks really bleak for small operators. Many people that rely on seasonal work (mainly tourism) are on social benefits during the winter because there is no work around here. Believe me i know! We dont want open cast mine, but underground mining like Favona might be the way to do it with minimal environmental impact and provide some employment around here. And why not?
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“There is not going to be open cast mine in the Northern Coromandel”
Hooray! Well done Catherine and Jeanette and thanks for the heads-up coromoggie!
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ha i see a couple of anti community, anti environmentalists have taken offense , they are thin skinned alright these anti folk… everyone knows you cannot trust a mining company, Waihi is a very good example of how “plans change” with or without the communities blessing once they have their large carbon foot in the door…
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