It is impossible for the Philex operations managers and their veteran engineers not to know Tailings Dam No. 3 could break anytime. They knew It was built in 1992 and had a life span of 20 years, or up to 2012. So why is there still no Tailings Dam No. 4 when Dam No. 3 should be full by now? Building a new dam takes years. They should have built one years ago. Was it mismanagement or greed? Was the setup of a new dam intentionally deferred?
Is it coincidental that the year Dam No. 3 was built, 1992, was the year Dam No. 2 collapsed? Was there a news blackout by a powerful force which kept the collapse of Dam No. 2 from the public? This author warned in an article written six months ago that Dam No. 3 might collapse anytime.
Dam No. 3 has a capacity of 142 million metric tons (MMT). In 2007, total impounded tailings reached 127 MMT. That was five years ago. Simple math shows projected tailings by 2012 would be circa 169 MMT, way beyond capacity. How can you continue operations when you have nowhere to put the tailings into? The Dam No. 2 collapse unleashed 80 MMT in January 1992. (Source – “Dossier on Philex Mines” by Arturo Boquiren, May 2009).
Boquiren also reported that, instead of a new dam, Philex simply kept raising the embankment of Dam No. 3, which any amateur structural engineer will tell you is dangerous because you are simply holding more tailings for walls designed for lower capacity.
So Philex should not talk of force majeure (caused by Nature due to heavy rains) when the disaster was caused by Man, or Man(agement).Was management scrimping on funds in violation of safety standards? With billions in earnings, a new dam is peanuts, so why scrimp?
Failon Ngayon of ABS-CBN reported that 20 MMT has leaked into the rivers as of its broadcast on October 13, 2012. That is about 17% of total capacity. Right this minute, the haemorrhage is ongoing. There are no reported successful plugging of the leak. If the leak is not plugged, the entire contents of Dam No. 3 of 142 MMT may drain into the Agno River, which nourishes hundreds of thousands of farmlands in Pangasinan.
Why is Philex and the government not asking for international help to plug the leak?
DENR-MGB is slapping a P1 billion fee on Philex, but that is only for the license penalty. It does not include social or agricultural damage. Marcopper gave the government billions in rehab money for the Boac River in Marinduque. We do not know where the money went to, but Boac is still dead today. Expert environmentalists claim the Marcopper damage is irreversible. The Marcopper spill involved a measly 1.6 MMT of tailings. The entire 142 MMT tailings of Dam No. 3, if it drains totally, is nearly 100 times of the Marcopper spill. Is the larger Philex disaster as irreversible as the Marcopper?If, for the sake of argument, we say very conservatively that Philex has to pay P20 billion in social and environmental costs, most of which should go to the farmers, this is still too small if the agricultural damage is irreversible.
P20 billion in damages is peanuts compared to the vast Philex earnings in the last few decades. Yet they argue that they should not pay a single cent because of force majeure.