Green warns miners to reclaim pits or face Gov’t crackdown

Mining Minister Floyd Green says the Government will adopt a zero-tolerance stance towards companies that delay or evade their legal obligations to rehabilitate exhausted mining pits.

Speaking last week during his post-Sectoral Debate press conference, Green pledged greater environmental stewardship going forward. 

“And to show you how serious we are, Alpart (alumina refinery) is not operating now, but because we’ve taken that zero-tolerance approach, they had to start reclamation last year because they had a backlog … and we’ve said to them, ‘It has to be done. It is by law; it should have been done before. Whether you are operational or not, it has to be done’,” he said. 

Alpart (Alumina Partners of Jamaica) is the largest bauxite and alumina refining facility in Jamaica, and was operated out of St Elizabeth and Manchester. It was acquired by Chinese-owned JISCO (Jiuquan Iron and Steel Company) in 2016. 

In November last year, Manchester Southern Member of Parliament Peter Bunting highlighted the land degradation in rural communities by mining companies.  

“If you were to visit many communities that have endured bauxite mining for years – Broadleaf, Harmons, Pratville, Asia – some of these areas have been mined out and there are still pits unreclaimed. When you go into the communities, you could only describe the landscape as post-apocalyptic,” he said.

Under Jamaica’s Mining Act, companies are required to rehabilitate mined-out bauxite areas to a standard deemed acceptable by the commissioner of mines within a three-year period. Failure to do so attracts a penalty fee of US$25,000 per hectare. If the mining pit remains unrestored even after the initial fine is levied, the holder of the mining lease is liable to pay an additional recurring penalty of US$2,500 per hectare. 

However, Peter Bunting argued that mining companies appeared to have found a loophole in the law.

“What the companies appear to be doing, is mining out about 95 per cent or 97 per cent of the bauxite, and they leave a little corner of the pit, and they call it an open pit. They haven’t finished it because a few truckloads are left to be removed, and that seems to relieve them of the responsibility indefinitely, because some of them have been in that state since 2010 and earlier,” he said. 

Land rehabilitation involves restoring land that has been physically disturbed by mining activities back to a safe, stable, and productive state.

Because mining involves stripping away vegetation, removing topsoil, and digging large pits, reclamation is a legally mandated process designed to undo this environmental damage and make the land useful once again.

Meanwhile, the minister stated that he will be travelling to China in June for direct discussions with JISCO, to seek a definitive response regarding the reopening of Alpart and the future direction of its operations. 

The JISCO Alpart facility in Nain, St Elizabeth, was closed in 2019 to facilitate a modernisation and expansion exercise.  

“We have to take a definitive decision about the future of JISCO this year. They had indicated to us that they would start the phased reopening towards the end of last year. We have already set a date to meet with them in person, so that they can tell us their plans. If they don’t have any immediate plans, the Government will have to act,” Green said last week during his Sectoral Debate presentation. 

He explained that the company met with him in December, and indicated that Hurricane Melissa – the Category 5 storm that made landfall in Jamaica a few weeks earlier – had pushed back their time frame. 

“As you may understand, JISCO is a state-owned company in China, and as such, there is a very distinct structure in relation to decision-making. So, while you have a team here on the ground, the people who make decisions are in China,” he said. 

He, however, emphasised the significance of bauxite’s contribution to Jamaica’s economy, which he said is critical as the country continues its recovery from Hurricane Melissa. 

Bauxite mining generates more than seven per cent of Jamaica’s exports and contributes approximately 1.8 per cent to the island’s gross domestic product. 

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com