mining&water

The province of Benguet, in the northern Philippines, is famous for its beautiful rice terraces along the mountainside.

Rice is of vital importance to the economic, political, and social stability of the Philippines. We eat rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, rice for dinner, and use rice to make many of our deserts.

A few meters from her home, Trixie looks down at the tailings dam for the Victoria Gold Mine, where the waste from the mining process is dumped.

Here is a closer look at the tailings dam where waste from the mining process is dumped at a rate ranging between 1,500 and 2,500 metric tons per day.

A close up look at the surface of the tailings dam. Some of the waste dumped here includes dangerous toxic chemicals such as lead, cyanide, and mercury.

Not all of the waste is toxic. There is also a significan amount of waste rock as well as industrial waste which can be found in and around the tailings dam.

On the right of this photo is the actual dam itself. This is the physical structure which is supposed to hold back the millions of tons of waste from spilling out into the nearby river systems. But this is the third dam built here after the previous two collapsed.

This is the same dam seen from the opposite side. This particular dam has been completely inadequate against the torrential downpour during the yearly rainy season and is especially vulnerable to earthquakes as Benguet is directly above a fault line. For years the chemicals have been leaking out into the nearby river systems.

This is from the same photo above, zoomed in to show a trickle of water flowing out of the dam.

Just a few meters past the dam, contaminated water (left) - carrying with it cyanide, lead, copper, and mercury - joins together with the clean water (right) coming from the mountain springs into the river system.

Here you can see some healthy rice fields along the left side of the river. These fields get their irrigation from the mountain springs behind them. Everything on the other side of the river used to be rice fields as well, but the rice does not grow there anymore because of the toxic chemicals that have entered the river system. You can see that the farmers have built a small barrier to prevent the river from contaminating the other side as well.

Everything you see here used to be healthy rice fields. But the rice will not grow here anymore. According to the Save The Abra River Movement, the siltation and toxic pollution of the rivers deprives communities in Cervantes, a small municipality downriver from the Victoria Gold Mine, of about 7.33 million kg of rice worth US$2.27 million per annum.

This is a close up of the cow in the previous photo. Although there are still some weeds and plants that are resilient enough to survive the contaminated water, they have little nutritional value. As a result, this cow is visibly malnourished.

In Cervantes, a few kilometers down river from the Victoria Gold Mine, Suley sits in the middle of her barren farm which has been contaminated by the toxic chemicals that have leaked out of the tailings dam and into the river system. Her farm has been barren for ten years now.

“If it wasn't for the mine, we would be living a good life,” she says, “but now, life is very hard.” Before, Suley's abundant farm more than adequately provided for her entire extended family. Now they are barely able to provide for their basic needs. Every year they try replanting fresh seeds praying that the soil will eventually regenerate. They will do so again this year, but after ten years, nothing has changed.