Newmont CEO: Indonesia pollution charges 'a blatant lie'

The pollution allegations against Newmont Mining Corp.'s Indonesian operations are "a blatant lie," the company's chief executive was quoted by Dow Jones on Tuesday.

"We are not polluting Buyat Bay," Newmont Chief Executive Wayne Murdy told a group of mining analysts and executives at a lunch at the Denver Gold Forum on Tuesday. "We meet very stringent (environmental) standards there."

Residents on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi claim that Newmont Minahasa Raya, the company's Indonesian subsidiary, has polluted Buyat Bay there with mercury- and arsenic-laced waste.

Murdy said Denver-based Newmont, the world's largest gold producer, has continuously sampled the water and soil around its Minahasa mine and has turned all that data over to the Indonesian government.

Five Newmont executives are being held in a Jakarta jail because of the pollution allegations. The U.S. ambassador to Indonesia said Monday he is working with the government to get the executives released.

Last week, the U.S. Embassy said the arrests were "inappropriate" and warned it would deter foreign investors.

Newmont officially closed the mine on Aug. 31 because it had depleted all of the gold there. Murdy hinted that the pollution allegations may have been made because the company had stopped operations and that source of income would no longer be available to residents there.

"Some people took advantage of the circumstances," Murdy said.

Murdy said some serious allegations were made in Indonesia, so "it was appropriate for the police to investigate."

But Newmont will continue to "stand behind that operation," he said.

Murdy said Newmont officials also met with the editors of the New York Times on Tuesday to try to get the newspaper to publish a retraction of a Sept. 8 story alleging that Indonesian villagers were suffering health problems because of Newmont's mining operations.

"We're going to push back where it's legitimate to push back," he said. "It's important for the mining industry."

New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis confirmed Tuesday that Newmont met with the newspaper's foreign editor, Susan Chira, and some of her colleagues.

"Their concerns are being very carefully reviewed, a process that will probably take a few days," Mathis said.

Murdy said the situation in Indonesia is "very different" from the company's problems in Peru, where residents had blocked the road to its Yanacocha gold mining operations.

Murdy said the Peruvians had "legitimate" concerns about what Newmont's operations might do to their water supplies. Residents around Newmont's proposed Cerro Quilish mine in the southern part of the vast Yanacocha mining region have suffered from four years of drought. Yanacocha comprises about 600 square miles high in the Andes Mountains about 375 miles north of Lima.

About 10,000 villagers began their blockade of the Yanacocha mine's access road on Sept. 2 after Newmont began exploratory drilling on the Cerro Quilish gold deposit. Community leaders eventually accepted a proposal from the Peruvian government and ended their demonstrations on Sept. 18.

"We got more reaction than we expected," Murdy admitted. "Fortunately no one was seriously injured."

He said Newmont must now work to convince the residents there that its mining operations won't hurt their water supplies. (*)