Nickel mine in Indonesia damaged farms and fishing grounds

Ansal grabbed a makeshift raincoat, an empty rice sack, and ran home as the rain began to pound the fields of Pomalaa. A few hours later, after the rain stopped, the 49-year-old returned to his fields.

“Everything is red,” Ansal told Mongabay Indonesia, here in Kolaka district in the province of Southeast Sulawesi.

In previous years, the occasional floods were more manageable, but this downpour caused the river to burst its banks. The ensuing overflow caked Ansal’s field in a layer of knee-deep sludge, drowning the newly planted rice under water the color of clay.

Red mud is typically seen near mining sites as a byproduct of the Bayer process, a chemical reaction used to extract aluminum compounds from bauxite ores. In nickel mining, a process known as high-pressure acid leaching separates nickel from its ores at high temperatures. Waste from nickel mining includes oxidized iron, which gives the waste its bloody tint.

A study conducted in the Philippines and published in February in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering found that one of the greatest challenges in nickel mining was the “siltation of streams, rivers and estuaries, which has negative impacts to farming and fishing communities living close to the mine sites.”

ForSDA, a local civil society organization, recorded that the flooding inundated 650 hectares (1,600 acres) of rice fields across three villages in Kolaka’s Pomalaa subdistrict. Pesouha village was by far the worst affected, accounting for around 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of submerged land.

Ansal returned to planting the remainder of the rice field the day after the flood, with fellow farmers Yohanis Soba Banten and Thamrin. They used extra fertilizer on the remaining half hectare (1.2 acres) of land. Ansal prayed for prosperity, and after two weeks the plants began to turn green.

Ordinarily, farmers wait around three months after planting to harvest the rice crop. However, flash flooding can disrupt this rhythm.

“If there is any disturbance like this then we have to wait for four months until it can be harvested,” Ansal said.

Anecdotal testimony from rice farmers here indicates drastic falls in productivity are taking place. Ansal estimates that his own yields have declined over time from 80 sacks a harvest to around 40.

The Kolaka office of Indonesia’s national statistics agency, the BPS, recorded rice production across the entire district falling from 61,281 metric tons in 2021, to 55,953 metric tons in 2022.

Through the mud

Production at the Pomalaa-Aneka open-pit mine began in 1963 following nickel prospecting by the Oost Borneo Maatschappij, a Dutch colonial mining company, earlier in the 20th century.

Since then, the Pomalaa work area has expanded to eight companies and the block is classified as a national strategic project by the government in far-off Jakarta.

The scale of the mining area and the number of different actors mean that the Pomalaa farmers aren’t sure where accountability lies.

“Forget about it,” Yohanis said. “Who are we going to blame?”

Whenever dark clouds form over Pomalaa, the threat of flooding causes anxiety among local farmers like Ansal and Yohanis. Yohanis pointed up into hills that were once untouched, but are today the site of a booming national industry.

“There are a lot of companies up there,” he said.

For those farming communities living alongside Indonesia’s newly expanding nickel mining industry, the experience in Pomalaa may offer a glimpse into a challenging future.

Consequently, some in Indonesia are calling for a thorough review of the impact of mining on rural communities poorly equipped to adapt to changing circumstances.

“We have to review the [nickel mining] permits around the rice fields,” said Andi Rahman, the Southeast Sulawesi director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s largest environmental NGO.

Learn more: Mongabay