Land mining provides
essential raw materials or ores that are needed in various purposes such as
construction, jewelry, electronics and others. Extracting these materials from
the earth’s crust depends on what type of raw material would miners like to
obtain. But, generally, the most important step in initiating a mining activity
is to locate first an area where a specific raw material is abundant. Usually,
a geologist does the location-seeking task (Blatt, 1997). After that, the
geologist will determine the mining technique appropriate for the chosen area.
It could be underground, open pit, strip or placer technique (Carlson, Plummer,
& McGeary, 2008). When the ores are mined, they are transported to big
crushers in order to become fine materials (Mining
processes, n.d.). These materials will be put in a flotation machine to
separate the valuable minerals from unnecessary ones. After which, the needed
metals are extracted from the minerals by using various methods such as
smelting and other extracting techniques. Lastly, the extracted metal is
purified through heat, chemicals or electricity.
Finding a particular mining site in the Philippines is
relatively easy since the country is rich with valuable metals and nonmetal
resources such as gold, copper, nickel and other traces of metals and
nonmetals. From the northern to the southern part of the country, mining sites
are to be found, including those that are under the exploratory and feasibility
study stage. As we can see in the figure below, there are two areas in the
country where mining activities are heavily concentrated. One is in the
north-west section of the island of Luzon, where the Cordillera Mountain range
is to be found. The other one is in the north-east section of Mindanao, where
the province of Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur are located. In both of
these areas, copper and gold can be abundantly found. With this abundant numbers
of mining sites in the Philippines, they should be regulated both by their
respective company and the local government.
Fig.
1 Mining sites in the Philippines
In several mining sites, accidents can also happen and
its victims can either be humans, the surrounding environment or both. One
accident occurred in February 2013 in a large scale commercial coal mine in
Semirara Island in Antique where five miners were killed and five were missing
as the said mine collapsed (Geronimo, 2013). The mining site, which is owned by
Semirara Mining Corporation, is the nation’s only large scale coal producer. Another
accident happened in Benguet in August 2012 where one of the tail pond of
Padcal mine broke, thus spilling waste into the nearby Balog creek, which
flowed into the Agno River and the San Roque Dam (Padaca spill, 2013). The said mine is owned by Philex Minining
Corporation. After three months, another accident happened in Narra, Palawan. The
Torronto mine, owned by Citinickel Mines and Development Corp., had
accidentally spilled its waste into a river and irrigation canals, thus
affecting farms and fish ponds. There have also been some accidents in small
mining sites for the past five years as can be seen in the table below.
Table 1. List of Mining-related
accidents in the Philippines within 5 years (2008-2012)
DATE
|
LOCATION
|
DETAILS
|
Sept. 22, 2008
|
Itogon, Benguet
|
Six
small-scale miners died
when they were trapped inside a flooded mine tunnel at the Antamok Gold
Field. Ten others were rescued, most of them after nine days in the tunnel.
|
May 18, 2009
|
Brgy. Napnapan, Pantukan,
Compostela Valley
|
Heavy rain for two days caused a
landslide that buried the bunk houses of gold miners at the foot of a
mountain, killing 24
small-scale miners.
|
Apr. 3, 2011
|
Tampakan, South Cotabato
|
Four
people were killed
and two survived when a section of an illegal mine collapsed due to heavy
rains.
|
Apr. 22, 2011
|
Sitio Panganason, Brgy. Kingking,
Pantukan, Compostela Valley
|
At least 14
people were killed in a landslide at an illegal mine site that the MGB had declared a
"dangerous" area.
|
Jan. 29, 2012
|
Brgy. Palanas, Paracale, Camarines
Norte
|
Two
miners drowned
when the water rose suddenly inside an illegal small-scale mining area.
|
Aug. 3-10, 2012
|
Brgy. Bila, Bokod, Benguet
|
|
Nov. 20, 2012
|
Brgy. Palanas, Paracale, Camarines
Norte
|
Three miners were killed when a
small-scale mining pit collapsed in the area.
|
Accidents are inevitable in mining sites but there is
something more that we can gain in mining. The mining industry creates jobs and
wealth to the local people (Harvey, 2009; Waters, n.d.). These kinds of
opportunities can only be grasped by those who live near the mining site. Thus,
it can help the local people in upbringing their current status. In addition, mining
industry has major impacts on employment, income and consumption that go much
beyond the taxes paid by the mining enterprises (Villegas, 2013). This further
strengthens the claim on how mining can be beneficial to the local government
and its people. The resources that can be found in mining, such as metals and
non-metals, are important not only as a financial source of income but as
building materials and source of trade (Globerover, 2010). As building
materials, they are very important since the metal resources that we get from
different mining sites, become essential in creating buildings, from small
house to high rising skyscrapers. As for the non-metals, they are important for
other usages such as source of heat (coal) and potteries (clay).
Mining site does also have disadvantages, which affect
both humans and the surrounding environment. Global warming, climate change and
pollution are some of the effects of mining to the environment (Perez, 2010).
For example, the burning of coal produces gases such as carbon dioxide, sulphur
dioxide, and nitrogen oxides which are considered factors for greenhouse
effect, thus they contribute to the global warming which can further result in
climate change and air pollution. Also, the surrounding area particularly the
forest and local wildlife are ruined by the mining activity (Perez, 2010).Moreover,
waste that comes from mining site has a lethal potential in poisoning nearby
water bodies and affecting the water ecosystem and agriculture. Miners’ abuse
of environment can also be seen through the numerous accidents in mining site
(Geronimo, 2013). Therefore, ignoring safety precaution in this kind of working
environment can cause human fatalities.
There are advantages and disadvantages in mining but we
can increase its disadvantages by regulating it. Both the local government and
the mining company can have an important role in regulating mining activities
here in the Philippines. For the local government, they must observe the
existing and prospective policies and agreements to existing and future mining
sites. In this way, they can maintain proper legal control over mining
companies with regard to their respective mining sites. To further strengthen
this kind of control, representatives from the local government should have a frequent,
scheduled or surprise visits to mining sites. In this way, they can ensure that
the mining companies really follow the agreed policies and whether they are
implemented in the mining sites. If the mining companies fail to commit to
these agreed policies, a corresponding sanction should be implemented
immediately after careful investigation.
In
order to minimize unwanted environmental damages, mining companies should
consider first the location of the future mining site. They should analyze the
abundance of specific resources that they would like to extract and their
possible effect on the surrounding environment. The existing mining rules and
regulations in the Philippines can be found in Republic Act No. 7942, which is
currently known as the “Philippine Mining Act of 1995”. All the rights,
regulations, safety policies and penalties of a mining site in the Philippines
are stated here. By analyzing the content of the act against the current
situation of mining sites here in the Philippines, we could say that some of
the rules are not properly implemented to them. One example is the waste
management of mining sites where most of the recent accidents are due to flawed
waste systems in these sites. Therefore,mining activities here in the
Philippines should be regulated in order to minimize human and
environment-related accident and to obtain natural resources that can benefit
the people.
References:
Blatt, H.
(1997). Our Geologic Environment. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Carlson, D.,
Plummer, C., & McGeary, D. (2008). Physical Geology: Earth Revealed (7th
ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Higher Education.
Geronimo, C.
(2013). Five miners killed, five missing as Semirara coal mine collapses.
Retrieved from http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/294880/news/regions/five-miners-killed-five-missing-as-semirara-coal-mine-collapses
Globerover (2010). Advantages and disadvantages of
gold mining in South Africa. Retrieved from http://globerove.com/south-africa/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-gold-mining-in-south-africa/4015
Haryvey, Y. (2009). Benefits of the mining industry.
Retrieved from https://magazine.cim.org/en/August-2009/news/Benefits-of-mining-industry.aspx
Padaca spill released toxic heavy metal (2013).
Retrieved from http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=12143
Perez, D.Z. (2010). The disadvantages of coal
mining. Retrieved from http://goarticles.com/article/The-Disadvantages-of-Coal-Mining/3662001/
Villegas, B. (2013). Distributing benefits from
mining industry. Retrieved from http://mb.com.ph/Business/Business_Main/25508/Distributing_benefits_from_mining_industry
Waters, L. (n.d.). Australia’s mining boom: fact or
fiction? Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2876728.html
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