–following breach of Bosai’s tailings pond

By Vanessa Braithwaite

RESIDENTS of Noitgedacht, South Mackenzie, Linden, a community located just below the dyke where the Bosai Minerals Group Guyana tailings pond is located, woke on Thursday morning to their yards and lower flats of their homes being inundated with bauxite slush.
The first resident to notice the flooding around 04:00hrs was Regional Executive Officer Orrin Gordon, who quickly notified the officials at Bosai about what was happening in the community.

Technical officials later discovered that a pipe, located in a confinement in the company’s tailings pond, had burst, hence all of the bauxite liquid was diverted into the homes of the residents. This came just days after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halted operations at Bosai’s wash plant, following notification that bauxite sedimentation from the company’s tailings pond was being discharged into the Kara Kara Creek, causing discolouration and high turbidity. The company was also fined $1,066,000 by the EPA.

Gordon’s wife, Denise, told this newspaper that if it wasn’t for her husband’s early discovery, the catastrophe would have been worse, and more homes would have been flooded. When this publication visited the community, about five homes were affected and scores of Bosai workers, both senior and junior, were trying to clean up the yard with various equipment and even manually. Workers were seen with mop and buckets in the lower flats of those houses that were flooded, trying to mop up the water.

Roshelle Castang, a Noitgedacht resident, told the Guyana Chronicle, “When I woke this morning to go to work around 05:30 hrs, I noticed the bed surrounded by water; the entire house was flooded. When I open the door, I see that water seep in from outside; the entire backyard flood out with mud and bauxite,” she related. It was then she noticed the Bosai officials at the Gordon’s residence, and notified them that her house was flooded as well. A distraught Castang said that she had to be rendered assistance to remove all of her items from the bottom flat. “Stove, fridge, everything had to come outside. All my vinyl rip up,” she said, pointing to the items.

She, however, commended the company for sending enough manpower to manually clean up the inside of her house, and drain the water from the yard with power pumps. She is looking forward to being compensated by the company should the need arise, since her items are damaged and she missed work already.

Mrs. Gordon said that the bauxite water had made its way into a room where she conducts home economics classes, while her entire yard was bauxite slush. She said it took her back to 2000, when the very same thing occurred, and the entire community was affected, she said. “We lose hundreds of chickens, and we didn’t get back anything,” she said. “But Thank God, now we don’t have any chicken in the pen, and our losses are minimal.”

While this publication was unable to get an official comment from the EPA on the issue, it was informed by Bosai’s Senior Technical Service Coordinator Wainewright Bethune that a team from the Agency did meet with Bosai to discuss the issue and the way forward, and conducted a preliminary visit of the pond, where there was the breach. He explained that the breach does not represent a complete failure of the pond and the work being done there, but means that a pipe in the confinement was not drawn properly, and the water began to erode the culvert, which collapsed, and the water was released into the community, affecting about five residents.

Bethune told the Guyana Chronicle that Bosai is saddened by the situation, and takes full responsibility for what has occurred, and has already tried to clean up those residences that were affected. He said, too, that the company will be doing a cleanup of the road today, so as to ensure that the community looks the way it did before the accident. All residents who suffered losses, he said, will be adequately compensated.

Bosai is currently in the process of looking at various engineering solutions to remedy the issues surrounding the tailings pond. The company is also currently doing a survey to determine whether the dyke where the operation is done should be elevated. It is also being considered whether the discharge should be rechanneled, so that it will have a longer route to travel to the pond, and there can be more settlement of the particles. Bosai is also looking at creating a network of dams or dykes, so that the flow of the sediment can be restricted. While the company was able to clear about 90% of the Kara Kara Creek over the week, when this publication checked on Thursday morning, the water was extremely discoloured again.

Bethune is hoping that this situation is remedied at the earliest opportunity, since there is presently not enough wash to go to the kiln for further processing.