The Stream, December 11, 2024: In Congo, Foreign Gold Mine Encroaches Okapi Wildlife Preserve

Reservoirs in southern Spain were depleted by heat and drought in 2024. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, gold mining threatens a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Nearly 10,000 wildfires broke out in Greece this year, marking a new record.
European Union scientists have confirmed that 2024 will officially be the hottest global year on record.
A new report has found that Synagro, a company owned by Goldman Sachs, has been selling treated sewage sludge to American farmers to use as fertilizer.

A proposed railway connecting Utah’s oilfields to Gulf Coast refineries could set a new legal precedent for how companies engage with the U.S. government’s environmental impacts requirements.

“A ruling from the Supreme Court in favor of the petitioners would really restrict the ability of communities to be aware of what’s happening to them, let alone to have any input in how those things should happen.” — Sambhav Sankar, senior vice-president for programs at Earthjustice.

The proposed 88-mile railway from northeastern Utah’s oil-rich Uinta basin to refineries in Texas and Louisiana “would transport up to 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil a day” through the Colorado Rockies, the Guardian reports. The project may also take NEPA — the National Environmental Policy Act — down with it, should the U.S. Supreme Court rule to limit the legislation’s scope.

Federal regulators approved the project in 2021, but has since been slowed by litigious roadblocks. In 2023 the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency, had acted brazenly in its approval process, failing to properly consider the railway’s environmental and community impacts. The railway’s construction and operation has the potential to cause irreparable harm to healthy mountain and water ecosystems due to spillages and development, according to environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Living Rivers, Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.

The project backers are pointing to particular language within NEPA — which requires companies to disclose “reasonably foreseeable” environmental harms to the public — as unduly vague and difficult to adhere to.

The U.S. Supreme Court will now hear arguments centering on this specific language. Its ruling could potentially reshape how NEPA analyses are conducted in the future.

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Stream Editor

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

In Idaho Wilderness, A Clash Over Water Quality and National Security — U.S. edges closer to approving big antimony and gold mine.
On the Frontlines of Climate Violence: A Conversation with Author Peter Schwartzstein — Climate shocks can lead to violent disruptions.

The Lead

Roughly 15 percent of the world’s remaining 30,000 okapi — a species of forest giraffe — live in the 5,000 square-mile Okapi Wildlife Preserve in the Congo Basin rainforest, the world’s second-largest behind the Amazon. In 1996, the preserve was designated as a United Nations World Heritage site for its biodiversity, impact on global health, and pristine waterways, including the Ituri River.

But today, like its namesake mammals, the site itself is endangered. The influence of Chinese-operated gold mines along its borders, AP reports, is polluting the soil and waters that flow into the preserve. As they develop and expand, mining communities are encroaching upon the park’s protected boundaries. Deforestation and poaching have increased.

The companies and Congolese government have put the blame for this on a mapping discrepancy — that mining licenses have been dolled out using inaccurate maps which shrink the preserve’s area by roughly one-third. UNESCO World Heritage officials say they hadn’t received any request to alter the shape or size of the park. “Between last January and May, the reserve lost more than 480 hectares (1,186 acres) of forest cover — the size of nearly 900 American football fields,” AP reports.

The burden on local villages has been significant. Residents have complained of water sources made toxic from mining runoff, with mercury and cyanide — important components of gold purification — turning farm soil infertile.

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

9,500

The rough number of forest fires that have occurred in Greece this year, amidst the country’s hottest and driest on record, Reuters reports. Compared to the annual average over the last 20 years, this number of wildfires was up by 7.5 percent.

The number of years hotter than 2024, European Union scientists confirmed this week. Data from January to November show this year “is now certain to be the hottest year on record, and the first in which average global temperatures exceed… 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period,” Reuters reports.

On the Radar

New reporting from the New York Times reveals that Synagro, a company controlled by Goldman Sachs, has for years been making millions of dollars by selling treated sewage sludge to American farmers to use as fertilizer. The treated sludge — known also as a biosolid, has recently been found to contain PFAS and other hazardous chemicals. Now, Synagro is “part of a major effort to lobby Congress to limit the ability of farmers and others to sue to clean up fields polluted by the sludge fertilizer,” according to the Times. Last week, Goldman Sachs became the highest-profile member to leave the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, “a sector coalition aimed at aligning bank lending and investment activities with global efforts to fight climate change,” Reuters reports.

More Water News

Giant Yams: Indigenous growers in India are working to revitalize tuber production, which has been affected in recent years by flooding, landslides, and subsequent flooding, BBC reports.

Arctic Report Card: According to the newly released Arctic Report Card, precipitation in the Arctic “has shown an increasing trend from 1950 through 2024,” while warming in the Arctic as a whole has switched the region from serving as a carbon sink to becoming a carbon source.

Christian Thorsberg

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.