Saving Iceland Blockades Century Aluminum Smelter and Elkem Steel Factory

Sav­ing Ice­land, July 21st 2008
Press Release
GRUNDARTANGI – Today 20 activists from Sav­ing Ice­land block­ad­ed the sin­gle sup­ply road to Cen­tu­ry Aluminum’s smelter on Hvalfjor­dur and Elkem – Ice­landic Alloys steel fac­to­ry. They have chained them­selves to each oth­er using arm tubes to form a human block­ade as well as using tri­pod for the first time in Ice­landic his­to­ry.

The action went on for three hours and nobody was arrest­ed. “We protest the envi­ron­men­tal and human health haz­ards Century’s baux­ite min­ing and refin­ing activ­i­ties in Jamaica, their plans for a new smelter and refin­ery in West Con­go. Both Century’s and Elkem’s expan­sion plans will also mean destruc­tion of unique geot­her­mal areas in Ice­land and pro­duce large amounts of green­house gas emis­sions,” says Miri­am Rose of Sav­ing Ice­land (1).

Cen­tu­ry in West-Con­go: open­cast baux­ite min­ing
In 2007 Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum Com­pa­ny signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) with the Repub­lic of the Con­go (ROC) for the exclu­sive right to devel­op an alu­mini­um smelter, alu­mi­na refin­ery and a baux­ite mine (2). It spec­i­fies a min­i­mum com­mit­ment of 500 megawatts of gas-gen­er­at­ed elec­tri­cal ener­gy. Cen­tu­ry is sur­vey­ing where to mine the baux­ite and will start build­ing the smelter as soon as pos­si­ble (3).

“We believe that the Repub­lic of the Con­go has all of the ingre­di­ents nec­es­sary to sus­tain a prof­itable alu­minum indus­try,” said Cen­tu­ry CEO Logan W. Kruger (2).
“Kruger is right,” says Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son of Sav­ing Ice­land. “Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al rat­ed the ROC as one of the most cor­rupt regimes in the world. Exact­ly the kind of regimes alu­mini­um cor­po­ra­tions like to deal with…” (4)

“It’s very unlike­ly the poor will have any ben­e­fit from this devel­op­ment but they will pay the price of the envi­ron­men­tal impact. Oil rev­enue in the coun­try has nev­er reached them, why would it be dif­fer­ent for baux­ite?” Úlfhildar­son con­tin­ues.
“Con­sid­er­ing the baux­ite reserves in West Con­go, it is clear that Cen­tu­ry is plan­ning large scale open cast min­ing there, in the same way oth­er cor­po­ra­tions are attempt­ing in Oris­sa and what has also hap­pened in Jamaica, Guyana and Guinea,” says Indi­an alu­mini­um expert and author Samaren­dra Das who will be talk­ing on this top­ic at Reyk­javik Acad­e­mia on Wednes­day (see note a.).

“All over the world, where baux­ite is mined the envi­ron­ment is being destroyed and people’s liveli­hoods and health tak­en away from them. Peo­ple in Ice­land need to know where the baux­ite that is refined and then smelt­ed into alu­mini­um comes from,” says Das.
Cen­tu­ry in Jamaica: envi­ron­men­tal and health haz­ards
Cen­tu­ry-owned St Ann Baux­ite, it’s pre­de­ces­sor Kaiser as well as the ALCOA, RioT­in­to-Alcan and Rusal (which owns 1/3 of Cen­tu­ry), are also active in Jamaica, have been held respon­si­ble for rain­for­est being destroyed and tox­ic pol­lu­tion of drink­ing water (5,6,7). Cen­tu­ry want to open up a sec­ond mine and refin­ery in a joint ven­ture with Chi­nese Min­metals. That com­pa­ny is asso­ci­at­ed with prison labour fac­to­ries and gross human rights abus­es in Chi­na and else­where (see note b.).

Elkem – Ice­landic Alloys: pol­lu­tion acci­dents every week
Elkem — Ice­landic Alloys wants to expand its facil­i­ty at Grun­dar­tan­gi on Hvalfjor­dur for pro­duc­ing fer­rosil­i­con for the steel indus­try. It is already one of Iceland’s largest con­trib­u­tors to green­house gas­es and oth­er pol­lu­tants; expan­sion of the smelter would lead to a sig­nif­i­cant increase in Iceland’s car­bon emis­sions (1).
In July 2007 it was report­ed (8) that Elkem ‘acci­den­tal­ly’ released a huge cloud of pol­lu­tion from their plant. Appar­ent­ly the acci­dent was due to human error. Thor­dur Mag­nus­son, an Elkem spokesman, then said that this human error “recurs sev­er­al times a week.” Sig­ur­b­jorn Hjal­ta­son, chair­man of Kjosarhrep­pur parish, said that Elkem usu­al­ly pro­duced the emis­sions at night through­out the year.

About Sav­ing Ice­land
Last Fri­day, Sav­ing Ice­land stopped work at the con­struc­tion site of Cen­tu­ry Aluminum’s planned new smelter in Hel­gu­vík. This is part of their fourth sum­mer of direct action against heavy indus­try in Ice­land. In July 2007 activists also block­ad­ed the smelter and steel fac­to­ry.
Sav­ing Ice­land was start­ed by Ice­landic envi­ron­men­tal­ists ask­ing for help to protest the Ice­landic wilder­ness, the largest remain­ing in Europe, from heavy indus­try. As well as Cen­tu­ry, oth­er alu­mini­um cor­po­ra­tions ALCOA and Rio Tin­to-Alcan want to con­struct new smelters. This would require exploita­tion of all the geot­her­mal areas in the coun­try, as well as damming all major glacial rivers (see note c.).

This year, the fourth action camp to pro­tect Ice­landic nature has been set up near the Hell­ishei­di geot­her­mal plant east of Reyk­javik, which is cur­rent­ly being expand­ed to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty for Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum.

More infor­ma­tion
http://www.savingiceland.org

with a movie of the action
saving­ice­land at riseup.net

Notes

A.) On Wednes­day July 23, 19.30 h. Sav­ing Ice­land and Future­land will hold a con­fer­ence with the Indi­an writer, sci­en­tist and alu­mini­um expert Samaren­dra Das and ‘Dream­land’ author Andri Snær Mag­nus­son, on the influ­ence of the alu­mini­um indus­try in the third world. Also, the con­cept of alu­mini­um as a ‘green’ prod­uct will be exam­ined. It will take place at Reyk­javik Acad­e­mia, Hring­braut 121. Mr Das is avail­able for inter­views; please con­tact one of the Sav­ing Ice­land con­tacts above.

B.) In 2004 Min­metals attempt­ed a takeover of Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny Noran­da but were declined in 2005 due to seri­ous con­cerns over human rights abus­es by the Chi­nese com­pa­ny. This report details Minmetal’s asso­ci­a­tion to forced labour:
Dhir, Aaron A. (2006). ’Of Takeovers, For­eign Invest­ment and Human Rights: Unpack­ing the Noran­da-Min­metals Conun­drum’, Bank­ing and Finance Law Review, 22, 77–104.
C.) For more details and an overview of projects in Ice­land, see: http://www.savingiceland.org/sos
Ref­er­ences
(1) Ice­landic Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment (2006). Iceland’s fourth nation­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion on cli­mate change, report to the UNFCCC. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/isl… [Accessed 20–6‑08]
(2) AZ Mate­ri­als News (2007). Cen­tu­ry Alu­mini­um to Build Alu­mini­um Smelter in Repub­lic of Con­go. http://www.azom.com/News.asp?NewsID=7734 [Accessed 20–6‑08]
(3) Afrique en Ligne (2008). Con­go to build alu­mini­um smelter in Pointe-Noire. http://www.afriquenligne.fr/news/africa-… [Accessed 20–6‑08]
(4) Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al (2006). Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions Index 2006. Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, Berlin.
(5) Zadie Neufville, April 6, 2001, ’Baux­ite Min­ing Blamed for Defor­esta­tion’. See http://forests.org/archive/samerica/baux…. [Accessed 20–6‑08]
(6) Mines and Com­mu­ni­ties report,’Bauxite Mine Fight Looms in Jamaica’s Cock­pit Coun­try’, 24th Octo­ber 2006. http://www.minesandcommunities.org/artic…. [Accessed 20–6‑08]
(7) Al Jazeera (2008). Envi­ron­men­tal dam­age from min­ing in Jamaica, June 11, 2008 News. Avail­able through http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJa2ftQwf…. [Accessed 20–6‑08]
(8) MBL.is (2007). Reykur frá járn­blendi­verksmiðjun­ni Grun­dar­tan­ga. http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2007/07… [Accessed 20–6‑08]