IIn the shadow of El Llagal, a tailings dam that holds waste from one of the world’s largest gold mines in the Dominican Republic, lies the home of Casilda Lima. The roof is made of corrugated iron and the walls are made of wood, painted pink and yellow. A sign reads ‘God bless this house’.
Outside, the dam’s 114-meter-high gray wall looms large. Behind it lies a lake of waste from the mining process, where machinery and chemicals, along with a huge amount of water, are used to crush rock to extract gold and silver. A lot of substances found in residues are fatalothers are radioactive.
In 2014, Lima, 47, says she was told she had high levels of lead and heavy metals in her blood. She says she has developed heart problems and is living with headaches, nausea and fever. She claims this is due to pollution from the Pueblo Viejo gold mine and dam.
About 90 kilometers northwest of the capital Santo Domingo, Pueblo Viejo is located in Sánchez Ramírez, an agricultural province that faces major poverty challenges. The mine has had a number of different owners, but became a 60/40 joint venture between the Canadian-based companies Barrick Goldthe operator, and Newmont, an American company, in 2006. Barrick’s mining operations began in 2013.
“I never had any problems before Barrick came along,” Lima says. “Now I have a lot of headaches and kidney problems. It’s hard for me to breathe and I get very dizzy.”
Lima’s house is in Las Lagunas. She lives with her five children and two nephews, who also have health problems. “My 23-year-old son gets constant headaches and feels dizzy,” she says.
Las Lagunas is one of six communities, collectively home to more than 450 families, in the area surrounding the Barrick-built tailings dam, whose representatives claim serious damage to health, livelihoods and the environment as a result of mining activities.
Barrick plans to do that expanding the Pueblo Viejo mineand to build a new tailings dam three times the size of El Llagal, less than a mile away.
A report by Steven H Emermanwhich evaluates the impacts of mining, found that the environmental impact study Barrick presented to the Dominican government was “incomplete,” did not properly explore safer alternatives and underestimated the consequences of failure.
In a letter to the Guardian, Barrick Pueblo Viejo president Juana Barceló countered that Emerman’s report itself lacked supporting data and analysis, had not been subject to peer review and was contradictory.
Both existing And suggested dams are rated as “extreme,” meaning more than 100 fatalities are expected if the dam fails.
“It’s a barbarity,” said Fernando Peña, the coordinator of the Espacio Nacional por la Transparencia en las Industrias Extractivas (Entre), a coalition of more than a hundred organizations that oversee mining in the Dominican Republic. tailings dam.
Plans for the new dam and the mine expansion are top of mind for the population Nuevo Renacer Committee (New Rebirth Committee), representing the six affected communities. The headquarters is painted with skulls and crossbones and phrases “Yes to life” and “Move now!”. They have been asking the government and Barrick for years to relocate people.
Leoncia Ramos, spokesperson for the commission, sits down to explain what has changed over the past twelve years: “There are many people who suffer from breathing problems, vision loss, skin lesions, heart problems and depression due to the situation. People are dying.”
Community members have repeatedly pointed out possible water contamination. Barrick and the Dominican mining ministry say Pueblo Viejo is not responsible.
Before Barrick took over, another company had started mining on the site in 1975. In 1979 the Dominican government acquired the site. Operations ceased in 1999, causing “significant historical environmental pollution,” according to Barceló. She said “the past impacts, as well as those of other operating mines, remained beyond Barrick’s responsibility and liability.”
She adds that Barrick has provided $75 million to clean up areas beyond the border. All water is treated to meet regulatory standards before discharge, and the only discharge point is the Margajita River. Testing is performed daily to ensure compliance.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Mines says an analysis carried out by the government has shown that current mining activities in the area have no direct impact on the health of people and livestock.
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However, some people say they have seen it a decline in cocoa production. Others described how fruits that used to grow easily, such as mangoes, plantains and oranges, rot on the plant before they are ready, forcing people to buy food at the city market five miles away. “The Pueblo Viejo mine is one of the largest in the world,” says Ramos. “We could live in wonder, and well. However, there are people here who only eat once a day because they have nothing.”
Barceló says Pueblo Viejo has invested $7 million in local agricultural projects and cocoa plantations and that cocoa production in the area has generally increased since 2008.
In 2019, it was reported that a Canadian university professor’s study showing widespread dissatisfaction with the gold mine was halted from publication. by the Dominican government after Barrick raised concerns about the results.
Gold is one of the most important commodities produced in the Dominican Republic, and Pueblo Viejo is one of the largest gold mines in the world. Barrick’s total turnover in 2022 was just over $11 billion (£8.7 billion): the company returned $1.6 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. The Pueblo Viejo mine represented approximately 10% of Barrick’s attributable gold production in 2022 and generated $776 million in revenue, according to the company’s annual report. The The Dominican Republic’s GDP is $113 billion.
Dominican law requires an annual income tax of 25% and a 5% contribution of mining concessionaires’ net profits to the municipalities where the mine is located.
According to Peña and Ramos, a plan was drawn up to relocate 450 families from the affected communities, but that did not happen. Barceló and the Ministry of Mines say they are not aware of such a plan.
Barceló adds: “Since 2008, many people have moved to the area around the mine with the express intention of resettling and benefiting financially.” She claims that many families seeking resettlement live upstream of Barrick’s operations, making it “impossible that the mine has contributed to any contamination of the water, even apart from the fact that we do not discharge into this catchment.”
A letter sent to Barrick and the ministries in May last year, coordinated by Entre and signed by 16 Dominican and international organizations, claims that “the harm alleged by community members may indicate a violation of Barrick’s international human rights obligations, its contractual obligations and the company’s own environmental, social and governance standards”.
Barceló rejects this, saying the company’s employees pride themselves on being “good corporate citizens and conscientious and responsible stewards of the environment.”
In the meantime, the situation of the six communities is receiving increasing attention. After visiting the area last year, Juan Dionicio Rodríguez Restituyo, the chairman of the human rights committee of the Dominican Chamber of Deputies, told parliamentarians in December that what he and his team saw “horrified us” and that “the only solution these 450 families have is to be transferred to another place ”.
He added: “It is not possible that there is not an authority in the Dominican Republic that can say to that company (Barrick): ‘We are going to put it in the budget, find the formula so that these people can live and have a future to have. .’”