By Lisa Macdonald
A recently released Australian Conservation Foundation report accuses BHP of planning to recreate the environmental and social disaster of the Papua New Guinea Ok Tedi mine, this time in the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica.
ACF councillor Mark Horstman, who recently visited Dominica at the invitation of the Dominica Conservation Association, says that BHP has applied for permits covering 10% of Dominica's land area and about one-third of the country's protected rainforests to enable the company to begin cutting roads and drilling boreholes to explore a copper deposit.
Dominica, like PNG, has high rainfall (up to 10 metres per year in the central highlands), steep terrain, easily eroded soils and seismic activity. The terrain and climate make it almost impossible for a mining company to guarantee that rivers and forests will not be polluted by open cut or chemical extraction techniques, and the disposal of tailings. "Environmentalists and indigenous people fear that a copper mine in Dominica is another Ok Tedi waiting to happen", says Horstman.
BHP's proposed exploration area includes reserves that protect scarce and diverse rainforests, the best in the Caribbean. It also partly covers and is directly upstream from the lands of the indigenous Carib people and could degrade three of the country's major rivers that are used by the 3400 Caribs for drinking, fishing and agriculture, the report says.
Despite the recent legal victory over BHP by PNG land-holders along the Fly River destroyed by the Ok Tedi mine, the "big Australian" seems quite prepared to wreak destruction on yet another Third World country in its search for profits.