Abandoned and contaminated land - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 82

Figure 3.4 Scrubby maize growing at the experimental sites of the Toka floodplain in 2005.
and damage already caused, rather than preventing and controlling exposure from
uncontrolled residual wastes. When the scientific survey started, participants were
faced with the facts that the occupational health documents of the mine disappeared
under unascertained circumstances and the village was not included in the national
health statistics. Students who joined the university research group were chased away
at gun point by mine employees in 1990. The first visit and inquiries revealed shocking
information about technological failures and accidents at the mine, and found that
very few of the former employees who could remember the ore processing were alive.
Available information was confusing, incomplete and false.
The inhabitants of the Toka valley, the area of zinc and lead mining between 1950
and 1985, had no knowledge about the adverse effects of heavy metals. They were not
informed about this hazard; on the contrary, the risks of toxic metals were hidden and
denied by the state-owned mining company. The fading of the vegetable seedlings in
the gardens irrigated from or flooded regularly by the little creek crossing the village
was not linked to the presence of toxic metals from mining, ore processing and the
non-lined waste disposal sites. Figure 3.4 shows the growth of maize at regularly
flooded experimental sites in 2005. The picture taken from the shore of the creek
clearly shows a gradient in the growth rate of the vegetation: no or weak growth near
the creek impacted by frequent floods (in the foreground), better growth further away
from the creek with less frequent or no flood.
In the late seventies, people in the village started to grow new cultivars (e.g.,
berry plants) in their gardens instead of vegetables. They did not search the scientific
literature, did not prepare statistics and did not organize civil movements. This attitude
of average people was typical at that time; they were happy about having jobs in
the mine and have never questioned the environmental commitment of the mining
company.