Porgera Valley PNG: Paradise Lost

http://theangle.org's Damian Baker captures the heartbreaking story of the Porgera Valley tribespeople in Papua New Guinea who inhabit a once pristine region in the PNG Highlands, now ravaged through multinational gold mining.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• barrick gold png
• papua gold mining
• health png
• porgera valley
• damian baker

[angleorg]

TheTom You may be correct but Cyanide is used in the process and if it is not used Mercury is one of the end result problems. this is even acknowledged by Barrick on their website. As far as PNG water standards go!!!! Ask the villagers downstream what they think of the water.

The fact is that there is almost nothing living in the river below Porgera and PNG standards are joke.

Go have a drink and let me know how you go TheTom

[MsTRINITAS]

the present must be sacrificed for the future which has always been the s.o.p. of the developers and it works well so effectively and efficiently. no nation on earth has escaped this principle of governance...yeahh you wont accept that but that's the reality of human civilization yesterday , today , to come and to ad infinitum.

[Yuyan2010]

I have just returned from Porgera where I have worked with the Porgera and surrounding communities for the past 5 years.

Might I point out that at no time are you inside the mine area. The road and tunnels you are travelling are public.

The area you claim was burnt down is not the area you claim it to be.

The people in the creek looking for gold are doing so on their own land.

Misinformation in this area causes more harm to the people than you can ever imagine.

[Yuyan2010]

I have also just returned from Porgera. Might I point out you are at no time in the mine area. The road you are travelling and the tunnels you are moving through are public roads and tunnels outside the mine area.

The area you are filming as the area burnt down is not what you claim it to be.

Please try to get your facts right as misinformation harms these people more than you can understand.

I have been living and working with these people for five years.

[Kapulfilms]

I just returned fro Porgera last week. I have just placed a few videos i made about the pogera valley people on my channel- kapulfilms. I tend to try and help find solutions instead of sneaking around with cameras. My cameras were in plain site.

[F3000SL]

By all means make an environmentally and socially conscious video - just do it with some scientific and journalistic integrity, otherwise people end up calling you an idiot in youtube comments.

[F3000SL]

Any cyanide present in an open water system (fresh open water systems have an average pH of around 6) would be present as HCN, which either volatilises to atmoshpere and is broken down by UV light, or is sequestered by riverine and soil bacterium and used as an energy source.

The reason nothing lives in the river below Porgera is because of its naturally very high sediment load, which feeds the alluvial fan you can see offshore in the papuan gulf.

[F3000SL]

Typical concentrations of cyanide used in the pregnant liquor of a gold plant are around 200 parts per million. The average apple seed or lima bean contains approximately 10 times that amount. The nature of the use of cyanide in a gold plant is to extract the gold as aurocyanates (soluble salts of gold). A gold mill that discharged the cyanide into the tailings would go broke because they would be discharging all of their product too.

[F3000SL]

As for cyanide entering the waterway - I think what you amy be referring to is the process of riverine tailings disposal. - So let me point a couple of things out:

firstly, tailings discharge from Porgera equates to less than 1 percent of total sediment discharge below the mine - the rest being naturally occuring erosion in a high energy alluvial system.