The light of my life, Gomadi, a village who lives on the Indonesian island of Obi, still reminds the cashew orchard that her grandfather was keeping near a spring of water.
Close to Jumadi’s small wooden house in the village of Kawasi, a huge Nickel Mine is located for the Harita group, a large Indonesian bloc producing hundreds of thousands of tons of soil with yellow -yellow color annually, and has a son -in -law that has a fuse near there, smoke in the air.
Since the mining began, Gomadi said, that she has begun to cough a pus and a lame, like many other villagers, while still drinking from the spring of Kawassi, who is taking place today full of thick, dark brown grades, and when I was asked about the reason she replied: “I don’t know.”
The “OCRP) Foundation followed the link between the change of water color and the new open factories around it and the case of Gomadi, and there was an investigation investigation worked on by the journalists of the Foundation, that the Indonesian Nickel Mines of the Harita Group nourish the supply chains of a number of major electric cars manufacturing companies in the world, but at the same time they were injecting local water for years with a toxic chemical material It is known as “Irene Brocovich”, or “Chrome 6”.
Public exile
Initially, the Harita Group is a major product for Nickel in the world, and it is an essential component of electric car batteries and stainless steel, and over the past two years, the company has provided about 6% of the global supply of this mineral.
Harita began its operations on the Obi Island in 2010, and it was promoted as a prominent economic project for Indonesia, and it was legally required to undergo periodic environmental tests, but rather received national prizes for its sustainable practices, but concerns about its environmental impact have begun to increase in recent years.
In February 2022, the “Guardian” newspaper reported that drinking water in Kawassi contains high levels of chrome 6, and studies showed that exposure to this substance causes serious health problems, including liver, kidney, respiratory cancer and skin ulcers.
The Harita Group denied the results of the “Guardian” newspaper and sought to reduce the impact of nickel extraction on the environment, but behind the scenes the internal discussions of the bloc were completely different from its public stances, according to the achievement of international newspapers in cooperation with the “Organized Crime and Corruption” Foundation.
Harita’s internal monitoring showed the pollution of the water surrounding the village of Kawasi in Chrome 6, according to hundreds of leaked email messages, checks and other documents, and the data collected just two days before the publication of the Guardian’s story showed that chromium 6 levels were actually exceeding the legal limits at that time.
Meanwhile, the group continued to extract the nickel and launched the nickel processing factory used in the manufacture of electric car batteries, just 200 meters from the Kawasi spring, while a large number of residents of Obi Island are still bathing, cooking and drinking from the spring water.
“There was no notice from the company,” Jumadi says, says one of the local residents was working for Harita that “bottled water is available for those who have money, but for my ideals, there is no choice but to use spring water.”
It remains and expands
Indonesian law requires mining companies to reduce possible environmental damage by monitoring wastewater and groundwater and submitting their reports to the authorities on the percentage of chemicals, including chrome 6.
When registering higher levels, companies face an increasing audit by the authorities, and they must take measures, otherwise they may face penalties ranging from fines and the closure of commercial activity, or even criminal prosecution.
The leaked documents show that chrome 6 levels in the water resulting from a Harita mining were 3 times the legal limits early in 2012.
By 2013, Harita began trying to reduce pollution levels by building “sedimentation pools”, which are shallow ponds designed to reserve contaminated water and prevent its flow abroad, and the company began to treat wastewater with iron sulfate and use wetlands to absorb pollution.
But internal examinations showed that these efforts failed to prevent vineyards 6 levels from continuing to overcome the legal limits.
The investigation led by the “Organized Crime and Corruption” organization stated that senior executives in the company were aware of these violations.
By 2018, Harita expanded its operations on Obi Island, where she started building a co -used process known as “high -pressure acid filtration” to convert low -quality nickel into a high -quality pure material necessary for electric car batteries, in partnership with the Chinese mining giant “Lego Resources & Technology”.
Within a year of the opening of the facility, it achieved revenues of one billion dollars, with the high chrome 6 deposits, and the presence of internal correspondence on the contribution of the new refinery to the exacerbation of the crisis, according to the Guardian report.
Harita is temporarily surviving
The “Guardian” report came at a sensitive moment for Harita, as it was preparing to include one of its companies on the Indonesia Stock Exchange, and the first public offering was expected to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from international banks.
Months of months before the public offering to be conducted in April 2023, Harita recorded a reading of 63, which amounted to 173 parts per billion in the Kawasi spring, which is more than 3 times the legal limit of drinking water, according to leaked correspondence obtained by the investigators of the “Anti -Organized Crime and Corruption”.
A few days before the proposal, Harita held a press conference at Kawassi’s spring, and the company manager and head of the Health and Safety and Environment Department stood in front of a group of journalists, raising a cup of water to his lips, then kept it there for a long time to take pictures, and he does not know whether he actually drank from him.
In conclusion, leaks or investigations have not hindered Harita’s efforts to expand her business, and raised about $ 660 million in one of the largest subscriptions in Indonesia during that year.
