Report from a fact finding mission on the Dundee Precious Metals smelter facility in Tsumeb, Namibia, in January 2016.
The subject of this report is not a usual environmental laggard. Here we take a closer look at the activities of a mining company considered to be an environmental and social champion by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Dundee Precious Metals (DPM) is a Canadian registered international mining company, listed on the stock exchange of Toronto, with operations in Bulgaria (Chelopech mine), Armenia (Kapan mine) and Namibia (Tsumeb Smelter). The company currently has plans for new mines in Bulgaria and Serbia.
Background to DPM operations
During the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria the Chelopech mine was a state owned enterprise. The product, in the form of copper concentrate, was treated at the Pirdop smelter together with concentrates from other nearby mines – Elacite and Asarel. Following a major accident with the smelter tailing pond in 1988, the Bulgarian government decided to stop the processing of the Chelopech concentrate in Pirdop due to its high arsenic content. The ban was regulated with a Council of Ministers decree in April 1, 1990. Following privatisation, DPM acquired the mine in 2003 and since then has overseen continuously increasing production from 900 tons of ore in 2008 to more than 2 million tons in 2014.
The Krumovgrad project (also in Bulgaria) was announced in 2005, with an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for ore processing and metal extraction involving the cyanide leaching method. Strong opposition from local communities and environmental NGOs resulted in a delay and significant changes to the project, reducing the scale of the mine, improving the tailings facility and bringing about the elimination of the cyanide technology. As of now the project has acquired most of the necessary national licenses, but operations have not yet started.
Background to the project and CEE Bankwatch Network
The Bulgarian partners of CEE Bankwatch Network have, for ten years, monitored some of DPM’s projects. Together with other local Bulgarian activists we have been commenting on or directly opposing many of the company’s activities in Bulgaria and Armenia, starting with the first investment proposal in 2005 for a greenfield open pit gold mine project in Krumovgrad, Bulgaria.
We followed this with opposition to an investment proposal in 2008 for a cyanide leaching technology for gold extraction in the Chelopech mine in Bulgaria. A number of environmental issues were part of our focus throughout this period, including the former bad state of the tailings dam and the transport of concentrate from Chelopech mine which was causing pollution and dust at the Zlatitsa railway station. We also had the chance to check the conditions around the zinc and silver mine in Kapan, Armenia and we became familiar with certain social issues related to all of these projects.
There was much attention given to the green field gold mine at Krumovgrad in Bulgaria. Through pressure exercised by civil society and the common sense of DPM management, this project was reduced significantly in scale and thus too its environmental impact. Following protests a change of the initially envisaged technology was introduced. The cyanide leaching plans were given up, preventing the import, use and dumping of hundreds of tonnes of cyanide in Bulgaria. In the case of Chelopech, apart from giving up the cyanide leaching, the extracted concentrate is now loaded on rail within the premises of the company instead of polluting the environs of Zlatica train station as in the early years of operations. All these problems were overcome in a process that can be described as many and varied – sometimes in an atmosphere of cooperation and dialogue; at other times we witnessed total denial and a hostile attitude from the company. The latter were cases when progress was achieved thanks to pressure and persistence from civil society activists.
Read the facts and findings in the full Report 2016:
Dirty Precious Metals Namibia Report 2016
