Suit against Tiomin dismissed

A lawsuit lodged in Kenya against the local subsidiary of Tiomin Resources (TIO-T) has been dismissed.

The suit, which sought to prevent development of the Kwale titanium-sands project on the Indian Ocean coast southwest of Mombasa, was launched by three local landowners. One, Frank Mutua, was a local farmer and land merchant who had been a principal opponent of the project.

An interim injunction had been granted in March 2001 by the Kenyan High Court in Mombasa, enjoining Tiomin from “undertaking any actions of mining or dealing with land.”

Kwale, with a resource of 200 million tonnes of mineral sands grading 2% ilmenite, 0.5% rutile and 0.3% zircon, was the planned site of an open-pit mining operation that would have produced, annually, 300,000 tonnes ilmenite, 38,000 tonnes zircon and 75,000 tonnes rutile.

Controversy over the project has been fed by activist groups and by non-governmental organizations, who criticized the environmental impact study commissioned by Tiomin and sponsored a study of their own, which said the project could have destroyed surface and groundwater flow patterns and possibly contaminated a major aquifer. Studies by Tiomin’s consultants found a low probability of significant environmental impact, except for loss of some swamp forest.

The Kenyan government completed a technical review of the environmental impact study during the period of the injunction, and Tiomin expects to have government approval for the project “in the near future.” The company will still require a mining lease and some related permits, and must resettle residents of two towns on the permit area.

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