Iron ore plant endagering coral reef

Vale, the company responsible for the iron ore plant project in Teluk Rubiah must do its best to minimise the damage, says the Malaysian chapter of Reef Check.

PETALING JAYA: The multi-billion iron ore processing plant being built by Brazilian mining giant Vale International at a 450-acre site in the coastal town of Teluk Rubiah, Manjung, Perak, is endagering the coral reefs in the area.

The warning came from the Malaysian chapter of the international coral reef monitoring organisation, Reef Check Malaysia (RCM), which had conducted a survey of the coral reefs at the Sembilan Islands, some 15km away from Teluk Rubiah, earlier last month.

“First of all, with a project of such scale, we would definitely have sedimentation. Corals, which depend on photosynthesis to live, would be smothered by muddy water and wouldn’t have enough sunlight,” RCM communications officer Aaron Tam told FMT.

He added that corals in Pangkor would also be affected by the project “quite a bit”.

“If you’re working with iron ore, there’s bound to be by-products. Even before construction starts, clearing of the land and plucking away of the jungle would cause soil to run off into the ocean and cause sedementation,” said Tam.

“We are not against the development per se. We understand that the project is decided, so realistically, we can’t stop it, but we want to make sure they are doing it properly and minimise impact,” he added.

Tam said Vale would have to make sure that it kept to regulations and adhered to the state government’s policies on such matters.

“They would have to take precautions, especially when it comes to discarding materials, disposing waste. They defenitely have to try to do it,” he said.

Asked if RCM would monitor Vale’s efforts in helping to conserve the environment, Tam said that RCM returned to its survey sites every year to see what kind of impacts continued development caused.

He said that its report on the health of the Sembilans islands indicated that it was “not that great” and RCM was now recommending that the government give it a protected status.

“When we were there, we saw corals smothered with nets and stuff like that. Adding on pressures (by projects like the iron ore plant) would definitely be bad for the plant life there,” he added.

Apart for the Vale iron ore plant, other factors impacting the coral life in the Sembilan islands were tourist development, fishing, and land based development.

“Based on the scale of the (Vale) establishment, land development would be one of the worse contributors as the Sembilan islands are not really affected by user pressure such as fishing, snorkeling and diving,” said Tam.

High biodiversity value
The RCM report concluded that the Sembilan islands do not have a high aesthetic value due to factors such as the rating of live coral cover around the islands only as “fair” and poor water quality.

However, it noted that the coral reefs around the islands had high biodiversity value, including the presence of some rare animals such as frogfish, seahorses, pipefish and molluscs.

RCM recommended that the government gazette the Sembilan Islands area as a Marine Managed Area as the islands were considered to be one of the last remaining significant coral reef areas on the West coast of Peninsular Malaysia.

Vale is the world’s largest iron mining and processing company. It has a locally registered company called Vale Malaysia Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, which started constructing the Teluk Rubiah plant last July.

The plant is expected to be operational by June 2014. It would process blended iron ore and pellets used in steel production for distribution to customers in Malaysia, Australia, China, Japan and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region.

The jetty would be the destination point for Vale ships of 400,000-deadweight tonnes carrying iron ore from Brazil.

Vale is investing RM4 billion in the first phase of the project, during which the plant would be capable of handling 60 million tonnes of iron ore a year. The state government had said that Vale’s investment would eventually come to between RM9 billion and RM14billion.

Locals living in fear
In interviews that FMT conducted last August, many local residents, mostly fishermen, expressed fears for their health and livelihood.

Consumer and environmental groups had consistently voiced opposition against the project. They said the Vale plant and its activities would destabilise the ecosystem of the area, formerly gazetted as a forest reserve.

Concerns had also been raised that the local tourism industry would take a blow from which it might not recover.

Former menteri besar Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin claimed that the state government under the stewardship of Zambry Abdul Kadir had sacrificed public interest for the material benefit of a select few.