Newmont to hear from NGOs, activists at annual meeting

Activists from the countries in which Newmont Mining Corp. has operations will be in Denver this week to voice their concerns about the company's environmental policies, MarketWatch.com reported Monday.

Representatives from Ghana, Peru, Indonesia, and Romania have come to Denver to bring their concerns directly to company management, said environmental non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, helping to sponsor the activists' travel to the U.S.

A Shoshone grandmother and rancher from Nevada also made the trip to Denver this week to talk about protecting Western Shoshone sacred sites that she says are threatened by Newmont's gold-mining operations.

Managers at Newmont, the world's largest gold producer, will meet with the concerned visitors on Tuesday, the day before the company holds its annual meeting at a hotel in downtown Denver near its headquarters.

?We'll have meetings with various NGOs and activists to listen to their concerns,? said Newmont spokesman Doug Hock. ?We also expect they'll be present at annual meeting and that they'll be asking questions there.?

Newmont has faced a deluge of environmental protest in the last year, and some of the activists coming to the annual meeting were a part of those protests.

?These representatives are traveling long distances to voice their concerns,? said Radhika Sarin, international campaign coordinator for Earthworks, a group urging reform in the mining industry. ?This underscores the severity of the impacts of Newmont operations on communities' health, environment, culture and livelihoods.?

In Peru, violent protests by local villagers broke out in September against Newmont's plans to expand its giant Yanacocha mine in northern Peru.

The company later withdrew from the proposed expansion area, saying it hadn't fully appreciated the degree of local concern about the expansion.

Newmont's practice of dumping mine waste into the waters near its now-defunct Minahasa mine on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, has landed the company in a criminal investigation over pollution allegations.

Indonesian authorities and human-rights groups say Newmont's local subsidiary, Newmont Minahasa Raya, has dumped toxic levels of mercury and arsenic waste from its operations into Buyat Bay near the Minahasa site.

Newmont has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying the mine waste wasn't harmful to fish in the bay or to villagers in the area.

Besides the ongoing criminal investigation, the Indonesian government has sued Newmont for $133 million in a civil suit over the pollution allegations.

Concern over Newmont's international operations has also rippled over to U.S. shareholders.

Five New York City pension funds that hold more than $60 million in Newmont shares had asked for a shareholder environmental resolution to be put on the ballot at the annual meeting, but the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that Newmont could omit such a resolution from the ballot.

At the time, Newmont said the SEC allowed the company to leave the proposal off the ballot because the ?subject of the proposal was a matter of the ordinary business of the corporation.? (*)