Freeport told to improve its waste management
Saturday, January 20 2001 - 05:00 AM WIB
State Minister of Environment and chairman of the Environmental Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) Sonny Keraf has told copper and gold miner PT Freeport Indonesia to improve its waste management system so that the disposal of its tailing and overburden would not create more environmental destruction.
Sonny said recently that he had also told Freeport that the company might be required by the government to pay certain amount of money to compensate the environmental destruction it had caused thus far because of below-par waste management system.
"We have asked Freeport to immediately improve and rehabilitate the location for disposing its overburden and tailing," Sonny said, adding that Freeport should revive Lake Wanagon as waste disposal site.
He explained that based on a study conducted by a team from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) revealed that Lake Wanagon could still be used as the site to dispose overburden and tailing.
"Based on the results of the study, it would be unwise to keep the status of Lake Wanagon in a status quo situation for too long. The lake could still be used as a site to dispose overburden," Sonny said.
Based on recommendations given by the ITB team, if Freeport revives the Wanagon waste disposal site, the company could increase its daily copper and gold ore output to its normal level of between 230,000 tons and 260,000 tons per day.
Nevertheless, Sonny reminded Freeport that the company must pay a compensation to the government for the use of Lake Wanagon as its waste disposal site.
Sonny also noted that the status of Freeport was still put in the balance by an inter-departmental team, led directly by Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Rizal Ramli.
The team scrutinizes Freeport's operation, following a report by Bapedal, stating that Freeport's mining operation in Timika had caused the biggest environmental destruction in the eastern part of Indonesia. (*)