Source from (Business Times): http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/articles/JGOLD/Article/
Published: November 12, 2012
The men are illegal miners, known locally as gurandil. In search of gold, they walk barefoot, marching like ants into nearby quarries in the belly of a dome-shaped hill called Pongkor.
Fresh water is scarce in Ciguha. Much of the groundwater has been contaminated with mercury and cyanide, a telltale sign of the extent of the illegal gold mining operation taking place in the village. The local police station, a 30-minute drive downhill, is littered with posters and signs warning that illegal mining is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
The local population has ballooned from a few hundred 11 years ago to around 3,000 according to a recent police estimate - at one point police even put the figure at 9,000 - turning this once sleepy farming village into a boomtown.
The nearby quarries have become mass graves for countless gurandils, with cave-ins and mudslides a real threat even when the sky is clear. The last official death toll was 214, back in 2004.
The miners know that each incident brings questions, investigations and scrutiny from the authorities, so a large number of accidents and deaths have likely gone unreported.
According to police, 16 illegal miners were killed in accidents over the past 12 months. The latest incident was in May in the neighbouring village of Pangradin, in Leuwiliang subdistrict, where eight gurandils were killed in a landslide.
"What's strange is that the area has no proven gold reserves," says Uba Subandi, the Leuwiliang subdistrict police chief.
Nanggung subdistrict chief Rumambi says there is little he can do to stop the influx of gurandils, 70 per cent of whom he says come from outside the subdistrict, including other parts of West Java, the neighbouring province of Banten, and as far afield as Lampung, Bengkulu and Kalimantan.
Dodi Susanto, an official with the Ciliwung, Cisadane and Citarum Rivers Monitoring Agency, says his office last conducted an assessment on the environmental impact in the Ciguha area in 2010, and the findings were worrying.
The agency found indications that the rivers around Ciguha, like the Cipangaten, the Cikadarak and the Cimarinten, had mercury levels of 60 to 400 milligrams a liter, far above the 0.01-milligram a liter limit tolerated by the government.
Mercury poisoning can be lethal in humans. The worst case in Indonesia occurred in 2004 in Buyat Bay, North Sulawesi, where Newmont Nusa Tenggara, the local subsidiary of US gold miner Newmont, had for years been dumping its mining tailings.
Although thousands of people fell ill, a court later declared that the bay was not polluted and that Newmont had complied with environmental regulations.
The risk of mercury poisoning doesn't seem to worry the illegal miners in Ciguha, most of whom handle the hazardous chemical without protective gloves, goggles or masks. Mercury is readily available throughout the village, with nearly every foodstall and coffee shop selling the chemical in empty mineral water bottles or plastic containers.
The threat of Ciguha or even Jakarta becoming another Buyat Bay is very real, with mercury levels of 0.38 to 10 milligrams per liter detected 24km downstream, where the rivers join up to form the Cikaniki and the Cisadane rivers.
The Cisadane cuts through densely populated areas, including parts of Tangerang, and skirts past West Jakarta.
The Bogor Health Agency has already recorded one death associated with mercury poisoning, identifying the victim as 68-year-old Sahrudin from Cisarua village, in the same subdistrict as Ciguha.
Authorities found signs that Sahrudin, who died of an undisclosed illness last year, had been exposed to large quantities of mercury over the course of many years. The health agency sought to carry out an autopsy to confirm that mercury poisoning was the direct cause of his death, but was repeatedly denied by Sahrudin's family.
Syahrir A.B., executive director of the Indonesian Mining Association, says the environmental damage wrought by illegal miners also threatens the operations of legitimate mining companies.
"Seven or eight years back, my company, Nusa Halmahera Mineral, was accused of polluting the water by using mercury, although we never used it," he says about his mining operation in North Maluku.
Syahrir adds that the company later conducted its own investigation and traced the environmental damage back to nearby illegal mining operations.
"These illegal miners never implement good mining practices, meaning that they don't have the slightest consideration for the environment or the well-being of the people," he says.
He also cites a recent case involving the firm Sorikmas Mining in North Sumatra.
"[Illegal miners] organised a protest and burned the Sorikmas encampment, [forcing its] operations to be halted," Syahrir says.
Andrie S. Wijaya, coordinator of the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), denies the notion that the illegal miners are wholly to blame.
"That's one-sided information. Although illegal miners can also damage the environment, their impact is not as grave as from that caused by mining companies," he says.
He adds that in the Sorikmas case, the incident was triggered by "the accumulation of frustration" among local residents rather than by illegal miners.
Indonesia is the world's seventh-largest gold producer, with foreign-owned mines currently responsible for the majority of the country's annual output, which reached 111 tonnes in 2011.
And with 4.23 billion tonnes of primary gold reserves and 16.88 million tonnes of alluvial reserves, according to 2010 estimates by the Indonesian government, there is much money at stake, luring more illegal miners to start operations even at the risk of losing their lives and getting into confrontations with large companies and security officers.
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