Stakeholders note pros and cons of $5.9-B Tampakan mine project

Stakeholders were in disagreement over whether Sagittarius Mines Inc.'s (SMI) $5.9-billion Tampakan copper-gold mine in South Cotabato will be good or bad for the surrounding communities and the country. Earlier in the week, the Environment Department issued an environmental clearance for the project, touted as the country's single largest foreign direct investment.   But the Tamapakan mine is a disaster waiting to happen, said Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) national coordinator Gerry Arances. “Mining has no place in highly vulnerable areas in the Philippines,” he said. Citing SMI's Environmental Impact Assessment, the group said the miner will have to cut 800 hectares of virgin forest, use up and waste billions of liters of freshwater, displace thousands of indigenous peoples from their ancestral domain and erect the largest tailings dam in the country. “In an area where rainfall is rising and is expected to rise even further, erecting the biggest tailings dam in the country is a disaster in the waiting, a la Marinduque and Padcal disasters,” said Jaybee Garganera, National Coordinator of Alyansa Tigil Mina, a member of the PMCJ. In defense of the project, Kiblawan, Davao del Sur mayor Marivic Diamante noted the economic gains of the projects. “The Environment Department is just doing its job in assessing the ECC application according to its merits,” he said in a statement. Kiblawan municipality is set to host the major facilities of the proposed Tampakan mine, including a freshwater dam, a tailings storage facility, a concentrator, and an employee village for 2,000 workers. According to Diamante, these pojects are expected to shore up revenues in terms of property taxes for this 2nd class municipality. Diamante said the community support in Kiblawan for the proposed mining project is due to potential employment, livelihood, and revenues pouring in once the operations start. “This is about jobs and livelihood opportunities for Kiblawan,” said Diamante. For its part, the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines also noted the economic gains of the project. “SMI is a member company of the Chamber, and we believe they can bring positive change in South Cotabato and Mindanao in general, as they practice responsible minerals development,” Jimbo Owen Gulle, the Chamber's communication manager, said in an email to the media. SMI, which is a local unit of Swiss global miner Xstrata Plc, got an Environmental Compliance Certificate for the Tampakan mine last Tuesday. The clearance allows SMI to proceed with other regulatory steps needed to operate the Tampakan copper-gold mine. SMI had pushed the schedule of the mine construction by two years to  2015, before production commences in 2019. The project was stunted by a 2010 ban on open-pit mining imposed by the local government of South Cotabato. The Tampakan mine is estimated to contain 15 million tons of copper and 17.6 million ounces of gold. — BM, GMA News