A disaster for the Raicoast People

While a lot of attention is focused on MCC in Madang, the Marengco Mine is doing its business quietly. Apparently the Marengco Mine is going to dump its waste directly into the sea at Astrolabe Bay in Madang. Although there will be different discharge points between Marengco and MCC, all their waste will end up in the sea. MCC deals with Nickel and Cobalt, Marengco will be copper and gold. The next question to ask now is which wastes will be more toxic? The people of Madang are really in great risks if they do not stop these companies from dumping into the sea.

If both companies will be dumping into the sea, how will the government know who is responsible for what? The government is in a situation where it cannot even do a study of the Astrolabe Bay, all these times it has been depending on the studies done by the companies.

Is this a preview of what we expect in Madang Province in the next 10 years?

The photograph below was sent to me by some friends in Madang Province of Papua New Guinea. It is a photograph of a fish taking its last straw of life. It was found along the coast of Madang. If you take a closer look, this fish is swimming upside down fish with its belly fully swollen.

This fish is commonly found along the coast of Papua New Guinea. People fishing along the reefs closer to the shorelines often catch this type of fish. According to coastal people, a swollen fish is an indication that it must have consumed some sort of poison in the food chain. At this stage the sources don’t know yet what kind of poison and where did that poison come from.

This raises a lot of questions when one thinks about the many development initiatives being talked about on media and others which are already underway in Madang Province. Is this fish a preview of what we expect in Madang in the next couple of years? Do the people in Madang should expect more of this in future especially if the Ramu Nickel Mine and Marengco start dumping their wastes into the Astrolabe Bay?
Is this what the coastal people are about to see more of when 10 more new fish canneries under the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) begin their processing operations on the coast of Madang?