The Ok Tedi river, a tributary of the enormous Fly River, runs through the remote, rainforest covered Star Mountains. Before the mine was built, the local Wopkaimin people of the Lower Fly lived a subsistence lifestyle.

The mine opened in the early 1980's to exploit what was believed to be the largest deposit of copper (and a huge seam of gold above it) in the world, and the town of Tabubil (popul. 10,000) was created to service the mine's staff.

For roughly a decade Australia's BHP (majority), and its partner the PNG government, dumped around 30m tons of mine tailings (left over metal and chemicals like copper sulphide and cyanide) and 40m tons of fine rock into the river system each year.

The tailings caused widespread environmental and social harm to the 50,000 people living in the 120 villages downstream of the mine. The chemicals poisoned the water, killing or contaminated over 70% of the fish, killing off other animal species (like wild pigs) that were previously hunted in the area. Tons of sediment in the riverbed caused a relatively deep and slow river to become shallower and develop rapids (pretty serious when the most common form of transport is canoe, which is now too dangerous for many women and children to navigate on their own). The raising riverbed also caused flooding, leaving a thick layer of tailings-filled mud on the flood plain. The mud smothered vegetation in an effect known as "dieback" destroying plantations of taro, bananas and sago palm - all stables of the local diet.

Although the impact was famously referred to as "ecocide", the copper concentrations in the water (roughly 30 times above the standard level), is still below the WHO's standards.

The reasons for this disaster are complex. Firstly the relatively new PNG government was weak, greedy and corrupt, and BHP simply didn't care. An independent Environmental Impact Statement conducted before the mine opened called for a tailings dam to be built. This would allow heavy metals and solid particles to settle, before releasing the clean 'high-water' into the river system where remaining contaminants would be diluted. But the plan was seriously flawed and in 1984 an earthquake (common in the area) caused the half built dam to collapse. Afterwards the company continued operations without any dam (there still isn't one I don't think), initially because BHP argued that it would too expensive to rebuild it, and then after the Panguna mine (see No. 2) shut down a cash-strapped PNG government decided a dam wasn't necessary.

But the seeds of conflict were sown before the mine even begun operations. Almost all of PNG's land is held under a complex system of native title, with ownership divided amongst a huge number of small clans, while the central government retains control over how resources that lie under the ground are used. And therein lies the problem.

The 2000 members of the clan that held ownership of the land on which the mine would be built were included in the formal negotiations. They got cash, jobs, infrastructure (schools, health care etc) but the indigenous communities who live downstream from the mine were not consulted, and received none of the benefits and all of the harms.

In the 1990s the communities of the lower Fly River Region sued BHP and received US$28.6 million in an out-of-court settlement, which was the culmination of an enormous public-relations campaign against the company by green groups.

As part of the settlement a (limited) dredging operation was put in place and efforts were made to rehabilitate the site around the mine. However the mine is still in operation and waste continues to flow into the river system. BHP was granted legal indemnity from future mine related damages.

But the most remarkable change was that BHP (now BHP Billiton) abandoned its interest in the mine and turned over ownership to a trust established by the PNG government in 2001- The Ok Tedi Development Foundation. The Ok Tedi mine is scheduled to close in 2010, and until that time the profits are divided two ways - 66% go into a long-term fund to enable the mine to continue to contribute to the PNG economy for up to half a century after it closes. The remaining third is allocated to current development programs in the local area (Western Province) and PNG more generally. International experts are brought in to carve up the proceeds to local groups and NGO's (one of those experts is Tricia Caswell, former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation and now, bizarrely, head of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries).

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