Word: talawaan
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Peter Tamban if the mining will be stopped any time soon, and all you'll get is an amused smile in response. Tamban is head of security at Talawaan's main mining site, a hilly patch of land that is mostly a gigantic mud pit dotted with shelters rigged out of blue and red tarpaulins. He also worked security for the geological team that surveyed the Talawaan area for Aurora; the company now plans to write off most of its $43 million investment and hand the rights over to its Indonesian partner. Whoever takes over will have to contend with...
...full-time youths patrol the site with homemade swords. In addition, the entrance to the mining area is staffed by a couple of heavily beribboned paratroopers in full uniform. Tamban only smiles again and doesn't reply when asked about the paratroopers. Others are less shy. "The security at Talawaan was set up by the military," says Daniel Limbong, a taciturn university professor who heads one of the few nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working to contain the damage at Talawaan. "They take money, of course." It is a cozy arrangement. And a lucrative one, too. According to a recently completed report...
...workers who are in danger. Some 6,000 villagers live around the 300-odd processing units, which operate in the area and spew out some 150,000 tons of mercury-laden slurry into the environment annually. Many of them are frightened, too. But such is the gold fever gripping Talawaan that they don't dare speak...
...Rini Sulaiman, an environmental toxicologist with the U.S.-funded National Resources Management Program. And that, says Daniel Limbong, means the mercury contamination will eventually threaten the 400,000 people living in Manado. It could be happening already. According to Limbong, samples taken from sediment in the estuary of the Talawaan river where it empties in Manado Bay are almost at the levels seen in samples taken where the river passes the mine site, about 20 km upstream...
...mercury being dumped by the illegal miners in Talawaan is a relatively stable compound that is toxic only after repeated contact. But eventually it will be converted by bacteria into methyl mercury, the far more toxic form that wreaked such damage in Minamata after the same transformation took place. Guesses about how long the process will take range from two to 10 years. But nobody disputes that the conversion will happen. And when it does, Manado will be in grave danger. In Minamata, the population subsisted largely on a diet of fish caught in their...