Ghost of copper mining still haunts environment

By Gerald  Tenywa

Until World Environment Day, June 5, in a campaign, Save Lake Victoria, Vision Group media platforms is running investigative articles, programmes and commentaries highlighting the irresponsible human activities threatening the world’s largest fresh water lake.Today we explore how the copper smelting plant in Jinja still haunts the population.

Three decades after its closure, Kilembe mines is still haunting the population and probably for generations to come. While the leakage from the mines has been draining into the nearby river Nyamwamba and Lake George, the smelting plant in Jinja is polluting Lake Victoria through a run-off of waste water.

It is almost lunchtime when I get to Masese, Jinja Municipal Council. Rose Mugabi, an area resident, sits by an open earth fireplace, cooking potatoes and groundnuts, a staple food among the Basoga.

Behind her house is an expansive bare ground that is being eaten away by copper residues washed down by the rains from the smelting plant.

She pays little attention to the pollution that has burnt down vegetation over the years, not knowing that the contaminated rain water ends up in the water where her children swim and also catch fish.

She looks up and her face frowns as if she is battling to understand why anybody would be bothered about the barren piece of earth that is no longer useful to farmers or suitable as a playground for children.

“I only care about my children,” says Mugabi, adding that the father of her children abandoned her years ago. “What matters most is putting food on the table and getting education for the children.”

She is a single mother of three, struggling to survive at the edge of urban life. The contamination of the environment spells doom for people in the neighbourhood like Mugabi, but she is ignorant.

The dangers of the residues

“It is a hidden danger,” says Dr. Aryamanya Mugisha, the former executive director of the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA). “The effects will come later in life with more devastating consequences such as cancer.”

A short distance away, the fishermen on Lake Victoria go about with their chores oblivious of the impending dangers the abandoned smelting plant poses to the environment. “

The poison may not kill the fish when it gets into the lake, but the fish get contaminated and the poison comes back to the human beings, who eat the fish,” says Mugisha.

Asked why this did not draw NEMA’s attention, Mugisha who headed the environment watchdog since its inception two decades ago, confessed that it was an oversight.

“It is one of the areas that were overlooked,” Mugisha said. “There is need for a thorough audit because something is going wrong at Masese. The audit should also propose corrective measures,” he suggested.

Copper’s trail of death

Masese’s experience, according to Prof. Eldad Tukahirwa indicates that the residues contain heavy metals such as cobalt. A similar phenomenon has been unfolding around Kasese, where copper was mined before being transported to Jinja for smelting.

Tukahirwa says a lot of toxic waste that had accumulated for decades was leaking into the   surrounding ecological systems such as neighbouring Queen Elizabeth National Park and LakeGeorge.                                                                                                                                 

In the late 1980s, part of the park in Kasese Municipality was left bare because of the waste water washed from the copper waste.

“We discovered that the piles of waste had a lot of cobalt,” said Tukahirwa, former head of Makerere University Institute of Environment and Natural Resources and the World Conservation Union at Nairobi.

Later, the Government and Kasese Cobalt took over the waste that had piled during the era when environment was taken seriously in Uganda and elsewhere in the world.

They extracted commercial quantities of cobalt from the waste, which was exported while improving environment, according to Tukahirwa.

In addition, streams and rivers from Kilembe mines also contaminate River Nyamwamba. This too, according to Tukahirwa, is not a threat because the large amounts of Nyamwamba water dilute the waste reducing its potency. Houses suffered acid rain

While the young people are blissfully unaware of the pollution that used to come from the copper smelting plant, the old residents of Jinja still remember the bitter experience of living in the neighbourhood of the giant chimney.

“People used to complain about itchy eyes and skin,” says a source who did not want to be named. “Harvesting rainwater from the roofs was avoided due to air pollution that used to come down as acid rain.”

Monitoring not done despite pollution report

The growing bare ground at Masese has attracted the concern of Jinja Municipal Council of local environmentalists, according to Ernest Nabihamba, the Jinja Municipal natural resources officer.

“The stones left behind have minerals and when they get into contact with water sulphuric acid is formed and this burns the vegetation,” he says, adding that he compiled a report, which he sent to NEMA, but no action has ever been taken to restore the environment.

Asked why they are not responding, Waiswa Ayazika, the director of environmental monitoring at NEMA, says: “I have not seen that report on Masese smelting plant. When was it sent?”

Two years ago, Nabihamba says he wrote to NEMA’s executive director calling for treatment of the effluent of the company, Buwende distillers that was operating at the site and the run-off.

He also says the copper residues could be used for construction of houses.

Copper raked in billions into Uganda’s economy

Back in the 1960s up to the 1980s, Kasese was the birth place of copper that was smelted at Jinja and contributed to building of modern Uganda. Today, Jinja is a ghost town, a shadow of its former self.

The global prices of copper slumped and it was not viable to produce copper. The copper mine ceased its production in 1982 and has since been on care and maintenance.

During its operation, according to a report of the Geological Survey and Mines, 271,000 tonnes of copper were produced. The reserves of copper ore at closure were 4.17 million tonnes with a copper content of 1.77% with opportunities to discover additional resources in the vicinity of the mine.

The price of copper is rising and plans are underway to resume mining at Kilembe mines.

Copper lessons for Uganda
The environment, according to Mugisha, was not important then, so the waste was abandoned in that state. Following the predicament set by copper mining, it is better to avoid environmental destruction because restoration is expensive.

This, according to Mugisha, is a lesson to oil activities and investments around the lake. They should not proceed without understanding the social-environmental implications and measures to address them. He also says there should be continuous monitoring of the environment.