Kumtor road blocked

Centerra Gold (CG-T, CAGDF-O) says there will be no significant production shortfall after protestors claiming effects from a 1998 cyanide spill held a week-long protest that blocked the road to the Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan.

The company announced the roadblock had been put up as a protest over the spill at a bridge on the Barskoon River, where a truck carrying dry sodium cyanide overturned on its way to the mine. At the time, no severe cases of poisoning were reported.

Wire service and local reports said the protestors were demanding further compensation for the accident, beyond that specified in a 1999 agreement between the mine’s operating company and the Kyrgyz government. The roadblocks were removed on the weekend, following meetings between the company and residents of the area.

The effects, or not, of the 1998 spill have been revived as a source of political controversy in Kyrgyzstan. The latest protest is the third road-blocking incident to affect the mine this year. Protests also took place in February and July.

After the change of government in March, groups in the Barskoon area mounted a new campaign to pressure the government or the company for more money. On July 18, there was a protest at a loading facility used by Kumtor. Nine days later, protestors led by a group called Karek made good on a threat to block the mine road. In response, the new Kyrgyz government agreed to appoint a commission to revisit the compensation issue.

A leader of the protestors, Erkingul Imankojoeva, told a reporter from Radio Liberty at the time that in the space of seven years, 343 people had died in Barskoon, a town of 5,000 people, and that 2,000 had been poisoned. Local physician Baktygul Imankojoeva asserted that there had been increases in infant mortality, birth defects and miscarriages, and that the 343 fatalities had all been “with a diagnosis of hydrocyanic acid poisoning.”

This was at some variance with the findings of a commission of inquiry in 1998, which noted only 16 people were hospitalized in the 72 hours following the spill with symptoms related to cyanide exposure, and that all of those had recovered. Others have blamed poor fruit harvests on the spill.

The protestors’ claims of long-term effects from cyanide exposure also contradict the known toxicology of cyanide compounds, which kill animal organisms by starving them for oxygen — a purely acute effect — and have no effect on plants.

Protestors also claimed that compensation money from the 1999 agreement between the Kumtor Operating Co. and the government had not been properly distributed after the government received it.