DAVAO CITY—Mercury-using ball mills and cyanide-laden carbon in pulp (CIP) processing plants in gold-rich Diwalwal mining area in Compostela Valley this week heeded government warning to transfer to a designated processing area near where small-scale miners continue to mine.
Lawyer Alberto Sipaco, president of the Philippine Mining Development Corp. (PMDC), the government’s corporate arm on mining operations, disclosed that 210 ball mills and CIPs began to dismantle their previous processing facility near the mining site and agreed to relocate to their designated spaces in the Mabatas area, an area about 6 kilometers further down the slope of the Mount Diwata Range.
The Diwalwal mining area covers 729 hectares inside the Mount Diwata Mineral Reservation Area, which was formerly allocated to the logging concession of the defunct Paper Industries Corp. of the Philippines, which was once Asia’s largest paper mill.
Despite the sharply declining popularity of Diwalwal as a favorite target of fortune-hunters and small gold miners, some 233 ball mills and CIP plants remained in operation, indicating the continuing, though declining ore yield in this mountainous portion east of Monkayo town, Compostela Valley.
Sipaco estimated some 15,000 families have also remained and fixed their hopes in the gold deposits, down from the more than 100,000 families back then in the years after 1983, when reports of gold panned in the area spread across the country.
Sipaco said the deadline for application to be awarded a slot in the Mabatas area for relocation expired on Monday, when 23 did not respond. He has already requested the local police and the Army to enforce the demolition anytime soon after the PMDC would get a court clearance to do it.
Sipaco first issued a cease-and-desist order to the processing plants in January this year, but disclosed his order was countered by both the municipal government of Monkayo and the owners of the processing plants. The town argued that the PMDC lacked jurisdiction in enforcing the order and the plant owners said the Mabatas area was still undeveloped and faced a problem on ownership.
Last week Sipaco issued the execution order to enforce the cease and desist order and as of Monday, 210 plant owners yielded.
He said the government has already cut access roads toward the Mabatas area as it also worked out the ownership problem with the tribe that owns it as part of its ancestral domain. An interim dam was also constructed to temporarily hold the toxic chemical-laden liquid mines waste from the mines area, but he expressed confidence he would get the P50-million fund to build a more concrete and sturdy tailings dam around the area.