– Noitgedacht residents compensated for damages

By Vanessa Braithwaite

THE Bosai Minerals Group Guyana (BMGG) has been further penalised by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for causing flooding in the South Mackenzie community of Noitgedacht, following a breach in its tailings pond last week.

The company was sanctioned to pay another $1, 066, 000 and to continue halting operations at the wash plant, until an entirely new tailings pond system is initiated.
This is according to EPA’s Executive Director Dr. Vincent Adams, who stressed on the seriousness of the issue and said that, while Bosai was cooperating at all levels to remedy the situation, all requirements must be met, to ensure the environmental hazards do not reoccur. He said an entire team visited Linden, following the latest incident of the flooding, had a firsthand view of the deficiencies, and held lengthy discussions with the company’s engineers and management, on fixing the issue, not for temporary relief, as was done in the past, but as a permanent solution.

Technical officials related 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 occurred just days after the EPA was notified that bauxite sedimentation from the company’s tailings pond was being discharged into the Kara Kara Creek, causing discolouration and high turbidity.

The EPA, Adams said, agreed with the engineering designs proposed by Bosai and would work step by step with the company to ensure the designs were actually manifested and the results sought achieved. While Bosai Senior Technical Coordinator, Wainewright Bethune, said the projection was that the new system should be completed within a week and operations were expected to resume, Adams said that the reconvening of operations was not determined by the completion of the new system, but on approval from EPA. “There will not be any operation of washing of bauxite until construction is complete and we approve it. We are working with them on a daily basis, but their progress really doesn’t matter to us, whether they want to take six days or six months, that is their call, they have an economic interest, it has to be properly done,” Adams said.

He does not want the company to execute the remedial work hurriedly since there was only about seven days of bauxite stock-pile remaining in the company. Bethune said that one week was the company’s projection and they were in compliance with all EPA stipulations.
Meanwhile those residents who were affected and recorded losses from last week’s flooding, were compensated, he said.

The situation at Bosai has had the workers a little tense and they (the workers) are calling on the management to expend all revenues to have the issue corrected once and for all. Workers believe that, over the last few years, the company did not take a hands-on approach to fixing the issue, hence the reason the situation was now affecting the operations. One worker opined that management was utilising the cheap and easy way out and now the company was facing the backlash of poor decisions.