The incident was reported to have occurred on Wednesday last week at the construction site of the huge nickel mining project driven by Brazilian giant Vale, in the south of the main island, near Goro.
But the major spill — of an estimated one to five thousand liters of sulphuric acid, especially in the nearby river — only became public later in the week.
The nickel mining site was scheduled to be commissioned later this year and the spill resulted from preliminary tests conducted in the past few months, ahead of the commissioning.
Southern province President Philippe Gomès, who went to the scene on Friday, expressed anger at the accident, saying on at least two grounds, this was not acceptable on the part of Vale-Goro, because it was infringing of the company’s obligations.
Gomès said one of those grounds was that it seemed Vale-Goro had manufactured thousands of liters of acid, which is the basis chosen for the extraction process of nickel, even before a buffer pool aimed at avoiding such incidents was completed.
As a result, the whole of the acid, leaked from what has been described as a faulty pipe connection, went straight into the environment, which is already globally recognized for its biodiversity.
Vale-Goro technicians later managed to neutralize high acidity levels, but environment organizations said the damage had been done already.
Gomès also expressed anger at the fact that Southern province authorities were only notified of the spill nearly thirty hours after the disaster occurred.
“It’s like bringing back the water temperature from 100 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees Celsius. You can do that, but it’s too late,” World Wildlife Fund local representative Hubert Géraux told local media, adding this was tantamount to an “environment disaster.”
Last year, in the same region, New Caledonia’s lagoons received world recognition from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural organization and saw this site added to the list of Natural World Heritage places.
As a precautionary measure, the Southern Province of New Caledonia, which issued the permits for Goro’s operations, has announced it was pursuing the matter in court, but is also from now on and until further notice placing a ban of the production of acid.
New Caledonia hold about a quarter of the world’s known nickel ore reserves.
The Vale-Goro plant is scheduled, when in full production, to reach a yearly capacity of some sixty thousand tons of nickel and five thousand tons of cobalt.
It represents a capital investment of over $2 billion.
