The opposition of Ampucao communities to Anvil's exploration plans

By Lulu A. Gimenez, APIT TAKO (Alliance of Peasants in the Cordillera Homeland)

"Your presentations are very informative. But they cannot convince us because experience informs us differently. No matter what you say in your efforts to shed light on the issue, what our people see in front of us is black."

A schoolteacher said this to the representatives of the transnational firm Anvil Mining, Ltd. and its local business partner, Itogon-Suyoc Resources, Inc. (ISRI), in a consultation held on the 11th of August between the two companies and the constituency of Barangay Ampucao in the Municipality of Itogon, Benguet Province. The teacher's words put an end to a two-hour debate between the small-scale miners of Ampucao and the large-scale mining companies' engineers regarding the impact of diamond drilling on water sources. While the engineers presented technical data to support their assertion that the drilling planned by Anvil would not affect community water sources, the small-scale miners drew on their own familiarity with the mineral veins and water channels beneath Ampucao's mountains, plus their communities' past traumas from exploration drilling, to contest the engineers' claims.

Anvil is evaluating the mineral tenements that it is buying from ISRI (successor to ISMI, the Itogon-Suyoc Mines, Inc.). The plan it has drawn up for exploration drilling in these tenements threatens the water sources of several communities in northern Ampucao.

Aside from the impact on community water sources, a number of other issues attend the plans of Anvil.

The Anvil-ISRI Deal

Anvil is an Australian firm that is listed on the Toronto stock exchange in Canada and that operates several large mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is among the world's major producers of copper and one of its most cost-efficient. It has just started to venture into Asia, selecting Vietnam and the Philippines for its first projects.

Anvil's sole concern in the Philippines at present is its Itogon project. It has paid ISRI a total of US$ 2.12 million as a sort of downpayment for 2,896 hectares of mineral tenements, including the Sangilo gold mine, which has lain idle for 11 years.

MINERAL TENEMENTS & HECTARES COVERED
= Mineral Locations, Sangilo, covered by Free Patent* - 35 has.
= Sangilo Mining Lease Contract granted 1987 - 582 has.
= Covered by Application for Mineral Production Sharing Agreement filed 1997 - 317 has.
= Covered by Application for Exploration Permit filed 1997- 1,962 has.
TOTAL 2,896 hectares

Until February 2009, Anvil will be doing a detailed evaluation of ISRI's mineral tenements, and afterwards prepare a feasibility study in which it will determine the most profitable means of mining these. It expects to spend at least US$ 2 million on exploration.

Upon the transfer of ISRI's mining rights to Anvil, Anvil will pay ISRI another US$ 500,000. Once its mining becomes productive, Anvil will start paying ISRI a Net Smelter Return Royalty of 2.5% for silver, 3% for copper, and 1% to 5% for gold, depending on the prevailing gold price. Once it has recovered its first 200,000 ounces of gold from ISRI's mineral tenements, Anvil will pay ISRI a one-off production bonus of US$ 1.25 million.

In its stock market news releases of 18 August 2006 and 31 March 2007, Anvil indicated that it was banking on the geology, minerology, and mineral production history of the Itogon area to make this relatively expensive deal with ISRI worth its while.

Drill Holes and Open Pits

According to the Anvil representatives who came to the 11 August consultation, the company's exploration plans include the installation of 13 drilling pads and the boring of 20 drill holes about four centimeters wide and a hundred meters deep for the purpose of extracting a total of 4,000 meters of core sample from the Frog Vein. The vein is situated between the tunnels of ISRI's Sangilo mine and the land surface of Ampucao and the Itogon Poblacion. According to the small-scale miners of Ampucao, their area's water table lies just beneath this vein. If punctured, the water it holds will drain into the tunnels of the Sangilo mine instead of discharging to the surface through the Pitang springs and towards the Maupa creek. These are the springs and creek that supply potable water to the households of sitios Abucay, Ampucao Proper, Cruz, Dalicno, Hartwell, Manganese, Station, Tangke, Tipong, and Upper Lolita. One of the Pitang springs also supplies potable water to sitio Lower Lolita in the neighboring barangay of Virac.

"How can we believe that with the number of holes you will be drilling, our water sources will suffer no impact?" a Dalicno elder said to Anvil's engineers during the 11 August consultation. "In 1969, ISMI damaged one of our water sources with just one drill hole. Then in the 1990s, while we weren't looking, Benguet Corporation did the same. That's how we lost Pitang 1, and why we had to seek out Pitang 2 and 3. Now, you will deprive us of these new sources."

Conceding that they might inadvertently puncture Ampucao's relatively shallow and fragile water table, Anvil's engineers told the participants in the consultation that they could undo such damage by refilling the drill holes after collecting their core samples. But a small-scale miner retorted, "If it were to end with drilling, the problem would be easy to solve. Just plug the drill holes. But if it went on to mining, the hole would be too big to plug."

"And that is where all this will lead - mining," he continued. "Do not try to tell us differently. Do not try to tell us that you have no plans in store beyond two years of exploration. . . You are going to mine. Otherwise, how will your company recover the money it is investing in exploration? . . .And I doubt that you will engage in stoping because ISMI has already extracted the ore from Sangilo's high-grade stopes. You will do bulk mining. And for that you will need to make a very large hole."

From the back of the hall that served as the consultation venue, a woman called out, "No to large-scale mining! No to diamond drilling!"

In fact, without his knowing, the small-scale miner had pinpointed the main problem that the Kankanaey communities of northern Ampucao would face if Anvil were to be allowed to operate in the area. Anvil is an open-pit miner. This is the main reason for its cost-efficiency in the production of copper. The holes Anvil digs are big enough to swallow entire villages.

First Seat

Only the village of Dalicno will likely be spared from excavation. A good part of the village sits on a patented mineral location that does not belong to ISRI but to local villagers who inherited this from the original owner, Kid-ing (who, however, registered it under the name "Kating"; thus ISRI's references to it as the Kating Claim).

But after Anvil has excavated all the land around her, Dalicno will be left sitting alone, in the middle of a desert, lonely for the company of all the villages she birthed, and as thirsty for water as her surroundings.

Dalicno was the first permanent village founded by the Kankanaey in Ampucao. It is the mother of all the Kankanaey villages that sit on the surface of ISRI's mineral tenements. It is from Dalicno that the people of Manganese, Station, Tangke, Tipong, and Upper Lolita originated. In fact, the people of Manganese, Tangke, and Tipong still consider themselves part of Dalicno, just like the people of Dalicno's sub-sitios, Daycong, Demang, and Dontog. And in fact the people of all the villages mentioned still regard Dalicno as the center of the kinship and ritual network to which they belong. Their eviction from the land on which their villages sit will dismember this network.

Ancestral Rights

Although established only within the last century, the complex of villages centered on Dalicno is widely acknowledged as an ancestral domain of the Kankanaey who have settled in Itogon. Even the Ibaloy and the Kalanguya, who preceded the Kankanaey in founding permanent settlements here, recognize the ancestral proprietary and territorial rights of the Dalicno network of communities to the lands they now occupy. After all, even the predecessors of the Ibaloy and Kalanguya communities of Ampucao remained semi-sedentary well into the twentieth century. Historical records and oral traditions indicate that the Ibaloy and the Kankanaey came and went to and from the Itogon area, mining gold ore, cultivating swiddens, and raising livestock for at least three-and-a-half centuries, from the 1570s to the 1930s.

Prior Rights

ISRI may be able to argue prior rights to its patented mining claims because these were located before the opening of the Sangilo mine in the 1920s. But artifacts discovered in 1991 by anthropologist Evelyn Caballero in an archaeological dig at Tangke clearly show prior exploitation of the mineral deposits at the Sangilo minesite by people who used tools and methods of small-scale gold production peculiar to Benguet culture.

Last Stand

Unless ISRI is granted the Mineral Production Sharing Agreement and Exploration Permit it has applied for, Ampucao Proper and Cruz might also be spared from excavation. But like the Dalicno network of Kankanaey communities, the Ibaloy-Kalanguya communities of Cruz and Ampucao rely on the Pitang springs for their water. They will be especially hard-hit because they are chiefly agricultural.

Once grazing ground for the cattle of a prominent Ibaloy clan, Busoy, some 25 hectares of Cruz and Ampucao are now used for vegetable production. Anvil has offered to employ the Busoy clan member who is currently in charge of the land, in exchange for his consent to its exploration activities. But the man has refused. "This is the last of our ancestral lands that has not been taken by the big corporations," he told an APIT TAKO organizer who spoke with him before the 11 August consultation.

Benguet Corporation and Omico have mined the other properties of the clan in barangays Virac and Ampucao. The clan has accepted compensation for these properties. But it will not enter into any deal for the land that is now occupied by the vegetable gardens of Cruz and Ampucao.

"We will not give it up." the man in charge of the land said. It is their last stand.

Recourse to Law?

Some of the people of Ampucao think it may be possible for their communities to get help from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), whose quasi-judicial functions empower it to issue an injunction on exploration and mining activities conducted within ancestral domains. But the people are not very hopeful because the NCIP has not yet validated any claim of ancestral domain over any part of Itogon. Also, Section 56 of the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act (IPRA) protects the property rights that big corporations like ISRI already enjoyed prior to 1998, when the IPRA took effect. Arguing prior property rights based on the principle of native title would entail a long and expensive legal battle.

Section 56 of the IPRA is precisely the reason why the NCIP has not been able to demand that Anvil obtain a Certificate of Free and Prior Informed Consent from the indigenous communities of Ampucao for its exploration of the mineral tenements it is buying from ISRI.

Petitions

Can local government units (LGUs) help? More than a thousand signatories to two petitions against Anvil's activities certainly hope so. LGU endorsement of mining projects is required by the Local Government Code of 1991.

The signatories to the said petitions urge that, instead of endorsing Anvil's exploration project, their local government officials at the barangay, municipal, and provincial levels instead endorse their opposition to it. They secured the endorsement of the Barangay Council of Ampucao just today, 16 August. They are, however, worried that the Municipal Council of Itogon and the Provincial Board of Benguet might not heed their call.

The Meta-Legal Option

Still, the people threatened by Anvil's exploration plans are undaunted. They are quite experienced in defending their communities by means of meta-legal action. In the 1990s, they saved these communities by barricading against the entry of ISMI's bulk-mining equipment into the Dalicno area. More recently, in 2005, they thwarted ISRI's attempt to evict Station villagers by mounting another barricade and chasing off the company's heavily armed security force, wielding nothing but their farm tools and walking sticks.

It is apparently at Station that Anvil plans to start drilling. But Station farmers and small-scale miners have already encircled the area with signs painted on galvanized iron sheets nailed to the trees, saying "No to diamond drilling!" #

*Issued prior to the promulgation of the Philippine Constitution of 1935, which declared all mineral deposits the property of the state.