Does this look like a titanium mine?
Posted by Adam Jadhav | Filed under madagascar
The mining company's big gambit
I came to Ft. Dauphin in remote southern Madagascar for one primary purpose: to visit the Rio Tinto titanium mine that is pledging to be environmentally friendly.
This photo came from the nature conservancy at the first mine site in Mandena; the nursery above will be used when the company attempts the gargantuan task of regrowing precious littoral (coastal) forest out of fields of sand left behind by the mine.
Environmentalists and community members I’ve spoken with (some off-the-record because they are trying to maintain good relations with the company — “It’s a delicate issue” is a phrase I’ve heard multiple times) seem to have hope mixed with a healthy dose of skepticism.
I’ve still got a bit more reporting and then a lot of editing and writing and composing before I go further.
But I can answer my initial question. No, this doesn’t look like a mine. None that I’ve seen, and I’ve visited a few mining communities, from Missouri to Peru.
For the record, Rio Tinto doesn’t allow pictures of the mining operation itself. There, in a water-filled pit the size of several football fields, a machine eats away at submerged sand, pumping a slurry into a floating contraption that resembles a miniature oil rig in the middle of the lake. There, in the so-called “wet plant,” a titanium/zircon compound is separated from silicate matter.
The silicate, about 95 percent, is tossed back, essentially leaving sand dunes in the wake of the mining operation where there was once littoral forest. The remaining five percent, the titanium/zircon heavy mineral deposit, is piped to a giant warehouse/barn where it is separated by an electrostatic process and shipped.
Tags: conservation, environment, forest, ft dauphin, madagascar, mining, nursery, plants, rio tinto, titanium
2 Responses to “Does this look like a titanium mine?”
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Royal Says:
October 11th, 2009 at 10:11 pmHow bout a hot bowl of slurry for breakfast?
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Adam Jadhav Says:
October 12th, 2009 at 9:52 amActually, since there’s no chemical process nor any major heat applied, there’s no hot slurry on site.
The titanium compound is shipped to Canada for smelting, where it is used as a whitener — from road paint to toothpaste — and, I believe, as a component of other composites.
For breakfast in Madagascar (where breakfast is sadly not a big deal) I stick to baguettes.
