WANGEKOR TOWN — Summary:
Cyanide contamination first struck the Mafa River in 2022; four years later, a second spill has again been traced to the Bea Mountain gold mine concession but unusual chemical has raised suspicions toxin was planted intentionally.
· The Environmental Protection Agency has promised a report by this weekend as residents report chronic illness, dead crops, and collapsed fishing and farming economies
Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn
· Experts warn groundwater and soil may now be contaminated for years.
One June evening in 2022, Peterson Kyne waded into the Mafa River as he always did, casting his nets into the water that had sustained his family with food, income, and funds to send his four children to school.
By morning, the fisherman's catch looked strange - too still, too heavy. But hunger did not leave room for suspicion. Though his wife refused to eat the fish, Kyne cooked it in a pepper soup and ate it all himself. He soon regretted it.
"Three months, my stomach was running," he said in a recent interview here. "Three months. Can you just imagine? Man's stomach running three months."
That morning marked the beginning of a slow disaster for dozens of communities along the Mafa River and its tributaries here in northwestern Liberia. The Environmental Protection Agency found that pollution killed fish and other aquatic life by stripping oxygen from the water.
Tests detected high levels of cyanide, a toxic chemical that suffocates aquatic life and can seriously harm people who drink contaminated water. The Agency said several factors may have played a role, but it traced pollutants to a tailings facility at Bea Mountain Mining Corporation, a gold mine concession owned by Avesoro Resources which is linked to MNG Group of Turkey, that has been operating since here since 2016.
At the time the Environmental Protection Agency warned communities to stop using the water and acknowledged that the spill had disrupted local livelihoods. It called for independent testing, to determine exactly what happened and how to restore the river.
Now, four years later, the Agency has confirmed another contamination event of the waterways here after dead fish were found. According to two EPA press releases, the pollution was traced to the concession area of Bea Mountain. The chemical responsible for killing the fish was cypermethrin, a powerful agricultural pesticide with no known use in gold mining. Residents along the Mafa River say the water has still not been declared safe -- and the people living on its banks are still sick, still poor, and still waiting.
Environmental experts warn the full impact of the spill may not yet be visible. They say the presence of cypermethrin -- a widely used insecticide -- raises urgent questions about how the chemical entered the water system and whether toxic residues have seeped into soil and groundwater, potentially exposing river-dependent communities to long-term health and environmental risks.
Community Struggles With One Bucket of Water a Day
John Thomas has been town chief of Wangekor for about two years, a role that dropped him into the center of an environmental crisis he never asked for. His voice carries the weight of a man who has watched his community slowly fall apart.
"This water, the time it was not polluted, that is what we depended on," he said, leaning forward in a wooden chair. "When the pump goes down, that the one we can drink, that the one we can wash inside, that the one we can take bath with," Thomas said in Liberian English.
With no reason to be cautious the people drank the water.
"We already drank it plenty," he said. "At the time, now it's late."
Thomas described gardens planted along the riverbank withering and dying; children who may soon drop out of school because there is no money. He described a community of over 1,500 people sharing a single working hand pump, each person allowed one bucket per day. "And that's not enough for us."
The Environmental Protection Agency is back on the scene. In an interview Emmanuel Urey Yarkpawolo, executive director of the Agency, confirmed much of what the communities along the Mafa River and Marvoe Creek had said, but with important caveats. The creek flows into the Mafa River.
He said the Agency had traced the contamination to the Bea Mountain concession area but had not formally concluded that the company caused it.
"The Bea Mountain is very puzzling," Yarkpawolo said. "We don't see any big farm around that water. Another puzzle is at the time the chemical happened, there was not a rainfall." (Rainfall causes chemicals to run off farms into waterways.)
Yarkpawolo could not rule out that someone may have deliberately introduced the chemical. Bea Mountain has faced years of opposition from local communities, rival interests, and activist groups over land rights, revenue sharing, and environmental damage. Its Mineral Development Agreement with the government would have expired this year, but in 2023 the Legislature approved an amendment granting another 25-year extension. Without evidence, some locals said the company was trying to drive them away.
Yarkpawolo said a joint security team comprising the Liberia National Police and paramilitary institutions had an investigation, including interrogating individuals connected to the burial of dead fish near the water bank. He promised a public update "before the end of this week."
Bea Mountain Mining Corporation did not respond to requests for comment.
Among the puzzling details to emerge from the Agency's investigation was the fact that a number of dead fish killed by the chemical were buried near the water's edge before the Agency had been notified of potential contamination.
Expert Says Incident Shows Need for Increased Monitoring of Concessions
Joe Blamah Jallah, an environmental agency's environmental evaluator has been following the case closely. He does not believe this was an accident.
"Burying these dead fish on the ground you know that we have groundwater," said Jallah who is a lecturer of environmental science at the University of Liberia and the African Methodist Episcopal University. "The aquifer is right now within that environment. The aquifer now is contaminated." He said the buried fish could be seeping toxic material into the underground water table, potentially threatening drinking water sources for years to come.
Jallah said those who buried the fish "knew that it was a harm to the environment. They wanted to hide the risks."
Jallah pulls no punches when asked what should happen now.
"Bea Mountain shouldn't even be operating," he said. "That risk needs to be curtailed and managed well before they start operation."
He acknowledged the counterargument that the company employs many Liberians and shutting it down would hurt workers. But he rejected the trade-off.
"If the people are not protected within the environment now, what's the social aspect you're discussing?" he asked. "That breaks the safeguard policy."
He warned that the effects of chemicals like cypermethrin and cyanide can last for generations. "This chemical has something that is just overlooked," he said. "Cyanide can cause blindness, yes, most especially children."
He also called for stricter discharge monitoring at every mining concession, a method in which water released into the environment from mining sites meets safety standards and doesn't harm the communities or ecosystems. Jallah also wants the EPA to increase unannounced inspections at mining sites on a quarterly basis.
"This issue today is Bea Mountain," he said. "Tomorrow it might be other companies."
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Communities Struggle In the Aftermath
Peterson Kyne says he cannot go fishing anymore. The stomach problem came back in September. He has been to hospitals in Monrovia. Lab tests were done. He claimed a legal case was filed against Bea Mountain for damages by the community through their lawyer. He has been waiting for a court date for months.
"Up to now, the case stands still," he said. "We can't get the head. We can't get the tail."
He names three people from his town who he believes died from the poisoning.
The EPA said it cannot confirm or reject a link between deaths and the contamination, noting that the agency does not conduct health assessments on individuals.
"That's really not in our purview," Yarkpawolo said. "We don't have medical doctors. We don't go testing people."
Yarkpawolo did not know if health authorities had done separate testing.
Kyne's wife is now the only breadwinner in the family. On good day, she makes $L400 ($US2) for a full day's work - not enough. The gardens she used to grow along the riverbank no longer produce. She plants something, and after a week or two, the leaves turn yellow.
Kyne is more than frustrated.
"I gave my life to God, my brother," he told this reporter tearfully. "Whole man, you sit down to depend on woman to be feeding you."
"We are the poor people," said Foday Samula, another resident of Wangekor Town. "We are only asking the government to fight for us. We can't do our own thing. We don't have the power."
He looked toward the river, then back. "That Bea Mountain," he said, "the cause."
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia Project. Funding was provided by the American Jewish World Service and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The funders had no say in the story's content.
