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Mining pollution in Mahdia significantly decreased – Bell
Given that the majority of Miners in the Mahdia region have learnt to use different methods in plying their trade, the level of pollution in the location has significantly reduced.
Regional Chairman Senor Bell
This is according to Region #8 Chairman, Senor Bell, who told this newspaper that the large mining concessions have learnt to utilize methods that have allowed for the significant reduction of pollution, but some of the smaller miners still used items such as mercury in their operations.
He noted however, that with the onset of the rainy season, all of the pits flood and overflow, causing the muddied waters to come together as one flow into the nearby creeks and water ways.
Recent studies conducted by local and international agencies, have suggested that unless the miners in the region adhere to eco-friendly rules and use mercury-free systems to capture gold from ore, there would be significant pollution of waterways in the very near future.
The Guyana office of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) admits to facing an uphill task trying to change bad habits cultivated by miners over the years, even as it has seen clear evidence of increased heavy metal pollution in the interior.
“Our studies done in the northwest and upper Mazaruni in the west, have shown that people and marine life are being affected. Some of the miners have mercury poisoning because they inhaled it from an open flame. It will take us years to change those habits. It won’t happen overnight,” said WWF Representative, Dr. Patrick Williams.
In the United States, the prestigious Harvard Law School Human Rights Programme, documented some of the headaches authorities are facing with the sector in Guyana. It pointed to very lax government controls in the country’s Amazon region, noting severe human rights abuses and devastating environmental damage
“Medium-and small-scale gold mining as currently practiced and regulated, inflict severe environmental, health, and social damage on the areas, and people near mining operations,” said the programme’s spokesperson Bonnie Docherty.
“Our observations confirmed that the areas around mines, resemble a moonscape of barren, mounded sand and mud. Since small-scale miners typically wash the topsoil away in order to get to the gold-bearing clayey soil underneath, the sites of former mines are quite infertile and incapable of supporting regenerated rainforest,” she said.
Mines Commissioner, Bill Woolford, was quoted in the media as saying most local miners abide by the law, but he blamed a small bunch of local and Brazilian wildcat miners for breaching regulations in an extremely poorly policed area.
David James, an attorney attached to the umbrella Amerindian People’s Association (APA), had recently said that in at least one community in the western Essequibo region, up to 96 percent of the population is at risk of mercury pollution.
As a reminder of how bad the situation can get, several years ago, a dam at a mine owned by a Canadian company in western Guyana collapsed, spilling an estimated 3.2 million cubic metres of cyanide-tainted waste into the nearby Essequibo River, discolouring it for days and polluting water to communities downstream for months.
The spill at Omai Mines was the worst environmental disaster in living memory and led to calls for a tightening of regulations that is yet to occur.
“For example, excessive sediment from mining operations has turned rivers and creeks near mining sites to a milky, orange colour, making them unusable for bathing, drinking, and washing clothes,” the Harvard study found.
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