TOXIC BOB's IN MONGOLIA

Toxic Bob Friedland Brings a Global Legacy of Enviromental Crimes, Including the Biggest Cyandide Spill In U.S. History, and the Death of Two Rivers in Guyana

ALL ABOUT BOB:
Even In the brotherhood of exemplary global citizens that comprise mining executives, Ivanhoe Energy CEO Bob Friedland stands out. His achievements are too numerous to be listed here, but he is widely credited with poisoning a Colorado river with cyanide in the mid-nineties (not that he is the only miner to be able to make this claim), and a truly heinous event in Guana.

However, Bob's most infamous business dealings involve the partnership his company Ivanhoe Myanmar Holdings and later Indochina Goldfields (renamed Ivanhoe Mines in 1999) forged with the Burmese regime SLORC (now called the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)). In 1994 SLORC and Ivanhoe began a lucrative joint venture in the Monywa copper mine, reputed to be the most profitable copper mine in the world. SLORC has a record of forcing labour on Burmese villagers, forcing workers to pay a part of their output to the state or taking their land in return for not forcing them to labour for the regime. There are no environmental laws in Myanmar, so the mining companies are self regulating. Get it? Even so, people downstream reported skin irritation from water discharged from the plant. It's a trade off however, because the water runs a beautiful bright blue on account of the copper sulphate.

How can this happen? According to Mining Watch Canada, insiders in this brutal regime are repaid generously by funds from Ivanhoe's mining activities. It's kind of like being a legislator in West Virginia. Even Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company, refuses to do business in Myanmar.

AND NOW IVANHOE ENERGY IS COMING TO MONGOLIA!
Like Africa, Mongolia is cursed with natural resources, particularly mineral wealth. The Chinese are well on their way to cutting down all the timber in the landlocked country, but the Americans, Canadians and Australians are not going to let the vast mineral wealth get away.

Ivanhoe Energy has been working the room to open its big ass Oyu Tolgoi mine since 2006. That year was marked by street protest, but everything seems to be patched up now. The venture will 82,000 square kilometres in a relatively untouched area of Mongolia. Construction began in June 2010.

However, Mongolian NGOs are claiming that environmental impact has been overlooked...is this even possible? The mine site is in the southern Gobi desert, which by definition is already a little short on water. The mine will require a lot of water for its' operation, but the mining companies say not to worry. They got it handled. They will find the water they need in one of the driest ecosystems on the planet.

Surely Bob learned some from his previous enviromental adventures?

BOB'S GREATEST HITS:
1. No reparations ever paid in Guana (1995)when a tailing pond at Bob's Omai goldmine collapsed (see a similar 2008 event in Tennessee, the most under-reported environmental disaster in American history) dumped a billion gallons of cyanide-laced waste into a tributary of the Essequibo River. The mine was a joint venture with the World Bank, the Guyana Government and Freidland’s South American Goldfields.

In 2006, a Guyana Supreme Court Justice ordered that a $2 billion lawsuit filed against Omai Gold Mines in connection with the accident be dismissed. Imagine. As an aside, we note that Mining has destroyed 88% of Guana's forest cover.

2. Cyadnide solution leaking from the Summitville Gold Mine in the once beautiful San Juan mountains of southeastern Colorado poisoned the Alamosa River in 1991. The cyanide, used to leach gold from the ore, penetrated ten feet ito to soil. All fish and most aquatic life was killed along a 17 mile stretch of the river to the Terrance Reservoir. Among the causes was an improperly installed liner, which the company refused to fix. So the resulting disaster was predictable, preventable and intentional. In 1992, the mining company abandoned the site, forfeiting a $3,000,000 bond.

The Superfund site has cost at least $150,000,000 according to the EPA estimate. (BTW - the EPA has never even come close to an accurate estimate for this type of project. Who pays for this, fiscally outraged Tea Baggers? Summitville Consolidated Mining Company, Inc paid a fine of $27.5 million, which doesn't touch the cost of cleaning up his mess. In December 1992, Friedland resigned his chairmanship and the company declared bankrupty. Friedland has never accepted responsibility and has never been charged.

There are 75,000 abandoned mines in the U.S.

The plundering of Summitville was expedited by the Colorado State legislature. In 1984, Friedland's Summitville Consolidated Mining Company, Inc. applied for a permit, which was denied by the Colorado State Mining Regulatory Agency because of environmental concerns. Bob then convinced legislators not to let the environmentalist stand in the way of commerce, a pattern that repeats itself globally every day. The only variable is the degree of corruption involved.