JIKANDOR, Liberia — For generations, households in Jikandor village fished and drank from the river that runs via Liberia ’s dense rain forest. Now poisonous air pollution is making them go away.
They blame the biggest gold miner in Liberia, Bea Mountain Mining Company. When lifeless fish float to the floor, they stated, they know to inform authorities. However for years there was little response.
“If we don’t transfer, we are going to die,” village chief Mustapha Pabai stated.
Over a number of years, cyanide, arsenic and copper repeatedly leaked from Bea Mountain’s substandard amenities at ranges that Liberia’s Environmental Safety Company described as above authorized limits. That is in accordance with EPA reviews that have been taken down from its website however later retrieved, in addition to interviews with authorities officers, specialists and former firm staff.
They supply essentially the most complete accounting but of the spills. The EPA paperwork additionally present that Bea Mountain didn’t alert regulators promptly after a spill in 2022 and beforehand blocked authorities inspectors as they tried to entry the corporate’s laboratory and think about outcomes of testing.
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This story was reported in collaboration with The Gecko Mission, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on environmental points. The reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Heart. AP is solely accountable for all content material. Discover AP’s requirements for working with philanthropies, a listing of supporters, and funded protection areas at AP.org.
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The incidents level to failures in company duty that “can solely be described as sustained negligence,” stated Mandy Olsgard, a Canadian toxicologist who reviewed the EPA reviews obtained in an investigation by The Related Press and The Gecko Mission.
The reviews additionally expose the Liberian authorities’s failures to carry the corporate to account. The federal government holds a 5% stake within the mining operations. Below Liberian regulation, the state can droop or terminate licenses if a miner doesn’t fulfill its obligations. However weak enforcement is frequent, with the World Financial institution citing restricted authorities capability.
In response to the investigation, the nation’s lately dismissed minister of mines, Wilmot Paye, stated he was “appalled by the hurt being completed to our nation” and that the federal government was reviewing all concession agreements. The outspoken minister was dismissed in October.
The gold that Bea Mountain mines is offered to Swiss refiner MKS PAMP, which is within the provide chains of a few of the world’s largest firms together with Nvidia and Apple. The investigation couldn’t verify what firms in the end used the gold.
MKS PAMP stated it had commissioned an unbiased evaluation of the New Liberty mine, the biggest of 5 mines that Bea Mountain operates in Liberia, in early 2025, and stated it discovered no foundation to chop ties however recognized areas for enchancment associated to well being and security. A follow-up go to is deliberate for 2026.
MKS PAMP declined to share the evaluation’s findings, citing confidentiality. It stated it will finish the connection if Bea Mountain doesn’t enhance.
Between July 2021 and December 2022, the latest interval for which figures may very well be obtained, Bea Mountain exported greater than $576 million price of gold from Liberia. It contributed $37.8 million to authorities coffers throughout that point.
Bea Mountain is managed by Murathan Günal via Avesoro Assets. Murathan is the son of Turkish billionaire Mehmet Nazif Günal, whose enterprise pursuits embody the Mapa Group. Avesoro Assets and Mapa Group didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Extracting gold from ore typically entails cyanide, a chemical that at excessive ranges could cause extreme neurological injury and will be deadly if ingested, inhaled or absorbed via the pores and skin. Cyanide have to be handled earlier than it enters and when it leaves a tailings dam, a storage website for mining waste.
Different poisonous substances, together with arsenic, typically present in gold mining additionally pose severe well being dangers if not correctly managed.
The Günals took over Bea Mountain in 2016, buying it from Aureus Mining, a UK-listed gold producer, after years of warnings.
In 2012, Canadian consultancy Golder Associates discovered a danger of contamination of native rivers from the New Liberty mine’s tailings dam and warned that seepage would breach Liberia’s ingesting water requirements. Two years later, the Digby Wells consultancy flagged cyanide and arsenic as key dangers and recommended measures to forestall contamination.
In 2015, a yr earlier than manufacturing started, a 3rd consultancy, SRK, warned that arsenic may exceed World Well being Group requirements for ingesting water if not correctly managed.
Earlier than manufacturing started, the Worldwide Finance Company, an arm of the World Financial institution, paid $19.2 million for an fairness stake in Bea Mountain’s father or mother firm to develop the New Liberty mine. However the U.S. consultant on the IFC board abstained, warning in a 2014 letter that the challenge lacked fundamental safeguards and elevating issues concerning the tailings dam and gaps within the environmental evaluation.
It was not clear whether or not the IFC nonetheless holds a stake, and it did not reply to questions.
Bea Mountain had pledged to comply with strict water administration guidelines and undertake the Cyanide Administration Code, a worldwide commonplace recommending air pollution limits and requiring unbiased audits.
The primary spill documented by the EPA got here within the first month of full manufacturing. In March 2016, simply earlier than the Günals’ buy of Bea Mountain, cyanide and arsenic leaked from the New Liberty mine. Useless fish floated downstream. Residents reported pores and skin rashes.
The corporate paused operations however publicly downplayed the spill, saying “there was no adversarial affect on any human settlement.”
It was the primary of 4 EPA-confirmed circumstances on the mine through which Bea Mountain exceeded authorities air pollution limits.
In June 2020, EPA inspectors discovered Bea Mountain working an unapproved wastewater system, and detected water contaminated with excessive ranges of copper and iron. When inspectors tried to have a look at the corporate’s water testing knowledge, Bea Mountain refused.
“Bodily entry to the laboratory was additionally not accredited,” the EPA stated in a single report.
That month, Bea Mountain withdrew from the Cyanide Administration Code with out ever present process an audit, stated Eric Schwamberger, a senior official on the Worldwide Cyanide Administration Institute that oversees the code. He referred to as such withdrawals unusual.
In Could 2022, lifeless fish drifted down Marvoe Creek, which flows previous Jikandor village and into the Mafa River that runs to the Atlantic. The EPA reported {that a} spill from Bea Mountain’s tailings dam had suffocated the fish “because of publicity to greater than permissible limits” of cyanide.
The corporate knew concerning the air pollution however didn’t notify the neighborhood and the EPA “till downstream communities first began observing lifeless fish species,” the EPA report stated. Corporations are required to report such spills inside 72 hours.
Greater than 10 miles (16 kilometers) downstream in Wangekor village, residents stated they hauled in lifeless fish earlier than any warning reached them. They believed the bounty was “a present from God,” stated Philip Zodua, a consultant of communities alongside the river.
Six residents of villages downstream of the Bea Mountain mine asserted that they and their households fell in poor health after consuming fish from the river in June 2022.
One villager, Korto Tokpa, stated she noticed youngsters gathering lifeless and dying fish. “All of them have been sick, vomiting, throwing up and going to the bathroom the entire night time” after consuming them, she stated.
Nonetheless, no exams have been carried out on the villagers. Unbiased environmental scientists and toxicology specialists stated there’s inadequate proof to determine air pollution as the reason for the reported diseases.
“With out correct testing and clear knowledge, the true dangers can’t be understood, and communities are left carrying all of the uncertainty,” stated Olsgard, the toxicologist. “It’s the firm’s duty to fill these gaps urgently.”
When EPA inspectors arrived on the mine to check the water days after the spill, they discovered arsenic and cyanide ranges properly above authorized limits.
Schwamberger stated the cyanide concentrations reported by the EPA, from water flowing out of the tailings dam, have been greater than 10 occasions the focus “that may usually be thought-about to be deadly to fish.”
In February 2023, one other spill occurred. The EPA documented “an enormous amount of uncooked copper sulfate” leaking into the surroundings. Six of 9 water samples breached authorized limits for cyanide and copper.
An EPA official concerned within the Could 2022 investigation, talking on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to debate the matter, stated the mine’s tailings dam had been initially constructed too small, a design flaw that later precipitated it to overflow.
Whereas EPA inspectors repeatedly advisable fines after the spills, just one penalty was issued by the regulator, a $99,999 high quality in 2018 that was later lowered to $25,000. It was not clear why.
In a written response to questions from the AP and The Gecko Mission, the EPA acknowledged three “air pollution incidents” between 2016 and 2023 through which laboratory exams discovered “greater than permissible ranges” of cyanide. It additionally confirmed fish deaths have been attributable to cyanide, copper sulfate and arsenic leaking from the mine’s tailings dam. It was not clear why the EPA didn’t acknowledge the fourth spill.
The EPA stated the spills it documented occurred earlier than the company’s present management took workplace in 2024. It stated it had ordered Bea Mountain to rent an EPA-certified guide and reinforce the tailings dam, and that the measures have been applied. It didn’t say when that occurred.
“No entity is above the regulation,” the company stated.
Following an EPA suggestion, a legally binding settlement was reached in Could 2025 for Bea Mountain to relocate and compensate Jikandor village, the neighborhood closest to the mine.
Bea Mountain is now exploring new gold reserves elsewhere in Liberia.
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Aviram reported from London.