China hits back after US warning on toxic mine spill in Zambia

The US embassy in Zambia’s warning over the impact of a February disaster at a copper mine triggered a sharp response from Beijing, which defended the actions of the Chinese state-owned mine owner.

China’s ministry of foreign affairs lashed out at the “ignorant and ill-intentioned manipulation,” of an ambassador in the southern African nation in a statement on Monday — an apparent reference to US envoy Michael Gonzales, who’d said the incident could rank among the world’s worst such disasters, and ordered the immediate withdrawal of US personnel from the affected area.

The spat highlights the balancing act Zambia faces. While needing to protects citizens and the environment, President Hakainde Hichilema’s administration is also hungry for investment in the nation’s vast copper resources to boost growth. Chinese and American companies alike have pledged billions of dollars in investment in new projects as the two superpowers race to control ever bigger shares of the world’s critical minerals.

Sino-Metals Leach Zambia Ltd. “actively shouldered responsibility, and pro-actively cooperated with the Zambian government,” to compensate the affected people, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. The Zambian government also “spoke highly of the work done by the Chinese company” in an Aug. 7 press conference, it added.

While the spill happened in February, the US embassy’s warnings this month brought renewed attention. Bloomberg News reported on Aug. 14 that the volume of toxic sludge released may have been far higher than official estimates — as much as 30 times more.

The Zambian government and Sino-Metals have said 50,000 tons spilled. However, findings from the company hired to assess the environmental damage, Drizit Zambia Ltd., said at least 1.5 million tons of the poisonous substance escaped when the reservoir failed. That would fill more than 400 Olympic-sized pools and rank the incident among the mining industry’s worst catastrophes globally.

Drizit said in a June 3 letter seen by Bloomberg and verified by the company that video evidence from social media and field data show the government estimate to be “grossly inaccurate.”

The firm described the event as a “large-scale environmental catastrophe” that threatened drinking water, fishing stocks and farmland in the area. Sino-Metals questioned the methodology used to assess the magnitude of the spill. It has terminated its contract with Drizit because of what it described as “contractual breaches.”

It’s not the first large-scale environmental disaster in Zambia’s mining industry.

A decade ago, lawyers representing 2,577 Zambian farmers sued Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Resources Ltd. in the UK for damage to their land and waterways from toxic discharges at its Zambian operations. The parties ultimately settled out of court.

Kabwe, the capital of Zambia’s Central Province, remains one of the most lead-polluted places in the world, decades after mining ended.

(By Matthew Hill)