March 24, 2000	atimes.com

Oceania Mining company finds deadly cyanide spill in PNG PORT MORESBY - An Australian mining company in Papua New Guinea has been trying to recover a tonne of deadly sodium cyanide accidentally dropped from a helicopter, as authorities warned it could poison nearby rivers. Dome Resources was forced to mount an urgent search for the cyanide pellets, lost in rugged terrain about 85 kilometers north of the capital Port Moresby on Tuesday as it was being transported to the Tolukuma gold mine. The cyanide was found Wednesday and a specialist recovery team airlifted in to decontaminate the area. The accident prompted an alert by PNG's National Disaster and Emergency service, which issued a warning to local villagers not to drink from nearby rivers or creeks. ''If the drum has fallen into a river and it is broken, people using this water are likely to die - they cannot survive,'' said University of PNG chemical expert Professor Kirpal Singh. Greenpeace compared the ''potentially disastrous'' accident to the cyanide poisoning of rivers in central Europe by a Romanian mine half-owned by Perth-based Esmeralda Exploration. However, Dome Resources said the cyanide was not close to any areas of habitation, gardens or village water sources. The company said the accident happened as it was transporting two one-tonne boxes of the pellets to Tolukuma, where the chemical is used for processing gold ore. One package broke away from a sling underneath the helicopter, plunging into the jungle below where it was likely to have broken apart on impact. Dome Resources managing director Michael Silver said the cyanide was found about 500 meters from where the company had set up a base camp. ''We are hopeful that we will recover as much as we possibly physically can.'' Silver said any material which could not be recovered would be neutralized with ferrous sulphate, which was being flown to the site. ''It's no excuse, but we have probably flown in almost 1,000 tonnes of chemicals and this is the first time we have had this sort of an accident,'' he said. Greenpeace said there was concern warnings about the cyanide may not reach isolated villages. The environmental group said the accident again highlighted the risk to the environment and local communities from gold mining. ''It is a tragic coincidence that today is World Water Day and we have had another potentially disastrous accident involving dangerous toxic chemicals risking waterways, this time in our own backyard in Papua New Guinea,'' said Benedict Southworth, Greenpeace campaigns manager. ''This chemical is a concentrated form of the same as we have seen devastate the Tisza River in Hungary and Romania when it spilled into the waterway. Despite promises of best practice management, Australian companies operating overseas are failing to stop extremely toxic and dangerous chemicals entering the environment.'' Dome Resources later reported that more than 60 percent of the cyanide had been recovered. Silver said latest news from the site of the accident was that about 65 percent of the cyanide was accounted for. He said the recovered cyanide would be flown to the Tolukuma mine and neutralized through use at the mine. ''The rest of the material that can be recovered tomorrow will be recovered.'' A team of technical experts flown to the site is removing about 10cm of topsoil from the impact zone and taking the material back to Tolukuma. The impact zone was about 30m by 30m, Silver said. ''There is about 90 cubic meters of material which will have to be picked up and put into boxes and transported to the mine,'' he told AAP. ''As we pick up this material we will cover the area with ferrous sulphate which will neutralize any of the cyanide we are unable to recover.'' Silver said there might be ''the odd, small amount'' of cyanide which will have gone outside the impact zone and ''flushed'' into the environment by the excessive rain in the area. ''We will be monitoring the cyanide levels in the streams all the way down the river system so we know exactly what is happening,'' he said Silver said it was a ''sad coincidence'' that the accident had happened so soon after a cyanide spill in Romania which poisoned hundreds of kilometers of waterways in Europe. ''It is very localized and we will move quite strongly to totally clean it up . . . it is completely different to the incident which occurred in Romania,'' he said. (Asia Pulse)

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