With friends like this ...

Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold finds itself back in the Sydney Morning Herald today in a piece by Marianne Kearney in Jakarta and agencies (but Rio Tinto somehow escapes mention):

PAPUA'S rivers, estuaries, and a World Heritage national park are being polluted by Freeport, the world's largest gold and copper mine, a leaked environmental impact report shows.

The mine, which has dumped 1 billion tonnes of mine waste known as tailings, has polluted forests and river systems with heavy metals such as copper and arsenic. The tailings that have flowed into the Arafura Sea are polluting the Lorentz National Park, the only national park in the world that stretches from glacier-capped mountains to a tropical marine environment, the report says.

"Modelling by an expert employed by Freeport confirmed that the tailings are reaching the coastal part of the national park, and testing showed that aquatic animals are contaminated with copper," said Igor O'Neill from WALHI, an Indonesian environmental group that has obtained several years of Freeport's environmental risk assessments.

"Freeport has known that their operations is endangering environment but they don't do anything," said Torry Kuswardono, from WALHI.

So where's WALHI? Turns out that is an acronym for the Indonesian branch of Friends of the Earth (Foe?).

They're pretty smart, though; somehow they knew that the closest Guambat would ever get to the Freeport-McMoRan Grasberg mine in Papua was via Google Earth.

They presciently said, "The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve."

The report referred to in the Herald article above is entitled, "WALHI report on Freeport-Rio Tinto", and its Executive Summary begins,

"This report presents a new and independent picture of the environmental impacts of the Freeport mine, a Freeport McMoRan and Rio Tinto joint venture, which although one of the largest mines in the world, operates under a shroud of secrecy in remote Papua province.

This report documents severe environmental damage and breaches of law, based on a number of unreleased company and government monitoring reports, including an Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) commissioned by Freeport-Rio Tinto and presented to the Indonesian government, but not made available to the public. The following issues are examined, concluding with recommendations for action...."

Follow-up: Rio Tinto held its Annual General Meeting today, and Dow Jones Newswires is reporting that some shareholders and "activists" had some pointed questions to ask about the Papua Grasberg mine. It appears Rio Tinto owns about 40% of the joint venture with Freeport McMoRan, which is a sufficient minority stake that Chairman Paul Skinner could just shrug it all off. He said Rio Tinto doesn't operate the mine and he has been "reassured by [the] way owner Freeport McMoran (FCX) conducts business and that Rio Tinto will continue to strive for best practice in economic, environmental and social areas and relay its standards to partners."