So last Friday whole day, we were in RTNMC, a big bararangay in the southernmost Bataraza municipality, Palawan. This is about six hours by bus, and five hours by car, 260 kilometers, from Puerto Princesa. Yesterday, we went to Puerto Princesa, and this afternoon will fly back to Manila.
I joined JB's team because I have heard, read, and saw powerpoint presentations about "responsible mining" but have not actually seen one. So the opportunity came, I grabbed it.
Total mining claim of RTNMC is 5,265 hectares covering 11 of 22 barangays of Bataraza town. After 38 years in operation (actual nickel operation started in 1975), the company has mined only 658 hectares but only about 25 hectares are actively being mined and quarried every year. The other mined out areas? They have been rehabilitated and covered with trees again. More of that later.
Among my interests is how a mining company contains those ugly and unsightly "mine tailings" that spill into rivers and the sea downstream. We were brought to this abandoned, "mission accomplished" mine tailings area. This is where another NAC subsidiary and sister corporation of RTNMC, the Coral Bay Nickel Corporation (CBNC), engaged in the manufacture and export of nickel /cobalt mixed sulfide materials, dumps its mine tailings.
When those tailings were still fresh, they looked like thick reddish blood of a monster or other giant animals, contained in an area by thick walls of soil and rocks up there, right beside the active mined areas, so they did not spill into creeks and then to Rio Tuba River, and ultimately into the Sulu Sea.
These dried tailings now look like this. Huge blocks of hardened red soil, not as soft as ordinary soil, but neither as hard as rocks. Even if they have dried up and solidified already, the thick walls of enclosure around them were retained and not removed, until now. I went down about 1.5 meters from where we were standing, where our service vehicles were parked, to this area.
Those unsightly cogons and other grass varieties now grow on these dried tailings. In some areas, various tree species just grew naturally, not planted by man. But for faster transformation from an ugly mine tailings area into productive agri land, the company put thick layers of ordinary soil on them. Several hundred trips of huge trucks carrying ordinary soil to be devoted here.
