Rio Tinto is facing a likely lawsuit in an English court brought by the UK-based law firm Leigh Day on behalf of people living in villages near a mine in Madagascar.of contaminating the waterways and lakes that they use for domestic purposes with elevated and harmful levels of uranium and lead, which pose a serious risk to human health.Minerals , extracts ilmenite, a major source of titanium dioxide, which is mainly used as a white pigment in products such as paints, plastics and paper.
“We have received the letter from Leigh Day,” said the Rio Tinto spokesperson, who declined to comment further on the allegations. The spokesperson pointed to a published report that states that the company’s recent water analysis had not detected metals, including uranium and lead, that had previously been identified as potential concerns.
“QMM operates in a highly sensitive area from a water and broader environmental perspective,” wrote a Rio Tinto spokesperson, who declined to attach a name to the statements from the company. “We are committed to working to address any specific issues that community members raise, and to engaging in constructive dialogue on how we can mitigate impacts of our operations while generating tangible and sustainable benefits for our host communities.
“People didn’t yet understand the ecological impact of the mine,” said Tahiry Ratsiambahotra, the founder of LuSud, an activist organisation that has become a thorn in the sides of the government and Rio Tinto. “So, parliament adopted the agreement.” The mine became operational in 2008. The barrier ended up entirely blocking inundations of salt water into Lake Ambavarano. Soon, nearly all the species of fish that thrived in the brackish conditions were gone. The extractive industry watchdog Publish What You Pay found in a March 2022 community survey that at least 27 fish species appear to have disappeared from the lakes since the start of the Rio Tinto mining operation.
The Malagasy regulator requires an 80 metre buffer zone between a mining operation and any ecologically sensitive area to avoid contamination. In 2015, the government regulator approved QMM’s request to reduce this buffer zone from 80 metres to 50. But in 2017, Yvonne Orengo, the director of ALT-UK, a charity that works on issues in Madagascar, accused Rio Tinto of breaching the buffer zone based on a series of satellite images she captured using Google Earth.
One issue with passive water treatment systems is that they can remove contaminants, like lead and uranium, from process water and store them in the wetland sediment. A later change in wetland water chemistry, such as an increase in acidity, could remobilise those heavy metals back into dissolved form in the water column. “This is why passive water treatment systems are sometimes referred to as ‘chemical timebombs’,” said Emerman.
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