Marinduque files $100-M suit vs giant mining firm

The province of Marinduque filed yesterday what it described as a "landmark suit" against a Canadian transnational company which dumped mine tailings in a large part of the province in March 1996, damaging the environment and the health of residents.

"This is the first time in history that a province has sued a multinational giant in another country," said Marinduque Rep. Edmund Reyes, whose mother, Gov. Carmencita Reyes, and other provincial officials filed the case against Placer Dome Inc. in the district court of Clark County, Nevada in the United States.

An Associated Press report datelined Las Vegas quoted Governor Reyes yesterday as saying, "They should and must answer for what they have done."

Congressman Reyes said the island-province is seeking at least $100 million from Placer Dome for the rehabilitation of areas, including rivers, damaged or silted when a large mine waste dumpsite collapsed, discharging thousands of tons of toxic waste into low-lying areas.

He said the Canadian firm should also pay for "economic damages," including compensation for lost properties and income opportunities of the people affected, and for health problems caused by the toxicity of the mine tailings.

"If this case prospers, it will send a clear signal to all multinational corporations doing business in the Philippines to think twice about damaging our environment and risking our health. Although they can run away, they won’t be able to hide for long," he stressed.

Reyes said that after the mine waste dump disaster, Placer Dome closed its operations in the Philippines.

He quoted his mother as saying that what the Canadian firm did was "a hit-and-run, but worse, because it was premeditated."

Placer Dome spokeswoman Gayle Stewart in Vancouver, British Columbia, said the company had not been served with the claim and could not immediately comment.

Governor Reyes and Walter "Skip" Scott Jr., Dallas-based lawyer representing the province in the case, blamed Placer Dome for a March 1996 environmental accident that sent millions of tons of open-pit copper mine waste down a river to the Marinduque capital city of Boac.

Scott and Patrick Byrne, the Las Vegas lawyer who filed the case, called Nevada state courts an appropriate venue to seek damages and restitution because Placer Dome operates three gold mines in northern Nevada. The lawsuit does not specify a dollar amount.

Placer’s Nevada investments total more than $1 billion and account for 17 percent of its more than $6 billion in revenues in 2004, according to Congressman Reyes.

Lawyers for Marinduque said they didn’t believe they could get a fair hearing in Canada and the lawsuit couldn’t be filed in the Philippines because Placer Dome no longer does business there.

"They are generally amenable to suit here in Nevada," Scott said.

The Marinduque mine, operated by Placer Dome partner Marcopper Mining Corp. of the Philippines, was closed by the Philippine government after the mining dam failed.

Placer Dome quit ties to the Philippines the next year, after 33 years of mining on the island. Cleanup was left to Philippine subsidiaries that Governor Reyes and Scott said did a poor job protecting residents from ill effects of tainted air, land and water.

"They have disappeared. They have ignored our plea," Governor Reyes said of Placer Dome, describing what she called "unspeakable poverty and devastation" on an island she said used to be a peaceful tropical paradise where people still live in bamboo and palm-thatched huts.

She said 217,000 people live in the province. Most live on Marinduque, an island of about 600 square miles (1,536 square kilometers) — slightly smaller than the Hawaiian island of Maui.

In Manila, her son said, "In face of calamity, it does a disappearing act so on one is left to answer for it in the Philippines, leaving our people to chase it and struggle for help."

The lawsuit alleges that forests, river basins and coral reefs have been smothered by hundreds of millions of tons of pulverized mining waste rock and toxic tailings laden with arsenic, cadmium, lead, manganese, nickel and sulfate.

Stewart pointed to a March 2005 Placer Dome report that notes the company had only a 40 percent interest in Marcopper Mining Corp., and was prevented by Philippine law from the full responsibilities of a majority shareholder.

The report said no one died due to flooding, and that company subsidiaries voluntarily contained the damage and compensated affected people. They also built roads, clinics and shelters, paid for an electricity system on the island, dredged the river affected by the spill and monitored groundwater for contamination.

No detectable acute health effects had been traced to the presence of tailings in the river, the Placer Dome report said.

Marinduque officials have lobbied with Canadian lawmakers to pressure Placer Dome to undertake a cleanup of the environmentally damaged areas in their province.

They have succeeded in having a committee in the Canadian Parliament endorse a report calling for greater responsibility on the part of Canadian corporations operating in other countries.

"When it comes to human rights and the environment, we need a law that prohibits Canadian companies from doing abroad what they are no longer permitted to do at home," the report states.

Placer Dome is one of the world’s largest gold mining companies, with 13,000 employees and interests in 16 mining operations in seven countries, according to its Web site.

The suit is similar to troubles confronting another multinational mining company, Newmont Mining Corp., in Indonesia. American Richard Ness, who directs the Denver-based company’s local subsidiary, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $68,000 if convicted of dumping mercury and arsenic-laced pollutants into an Indonesian bay. — With AP