by André Habet
At 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 20, 2022, the residents of the Gales Point Manatee (GP) community and other concerned Belizeans met with representatives of the Vulcan Materials Company, a mining company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. They gathered in a field adjacent to the community’s school to learn more about the proposed limestone mining operation in the nearby Sugar Hill area, presently under ownership by White Ridge Farms. Under three tents, plus another with refreshments, Vulcan representatives made themselves available to questions about the project, outlining the potential community impacts; the proposed port; and their environmental impact mitigation strategies.
The meeting followed Minister of Natural Resources, Hon. Cordel Hyde’s public opposition to the project earlier this month, and was arranged so Vulcan could address Gales Point residents’ questions and concerns about the mine. The tents featured various posters and brochures, and representatives attended to questions about the scale of the dredge the necessary port would require, the training for a range of mining and support staff jobs, and the extraction process the mine would use.
The last of those received some attention in an August 8 7News interview, where Vulcan VP of External Affairs, Janet Kavinosky made a distinction between strip-mining, a term that often carries connotations of environmental destruction, and Vulcan’s proposed method of ‘aggregate quarrying,’ which Kavinosky described as “taking big rocks and breaking them down to little ones”. Asked to validate Kavinosky’s distinction, hydrologist Dr. Ed Boles said that while the methods might vary, their differences are ultimately negligible. Both methods require stripping the forest above the mining site, and would negatively hinder the ecosystem services provided by the limestone hills and forest, including managing the quality and flow of water through the area’s landscape.
A few attendees had no prior knowledge of Vulcan, and others mentioned having conducted internet searches of their own and learning about the company’s contention with ten other countries for purported environmental harm. Some in attendance were curious about the possibility of steady employment once the mine began operation; others wanted to know the extent of the mine’s impact on the surrounding landscape, and a small contingent voiced the possibility of Vulcan potentially supporting alternative industries in the area instead of mining. Dennika Bowen, a Gales Point resident and tourism student, opposed the mine, calling it a threat to eco-tourism opportunities that would come with the completion of the Coastal Road’s present upgrade.
Gales Point resident, Anton Andrewin, Jr., said he did not want Vulcan to operate in Belize after previously working for the company last year, expressing frustration about the company prohibiting marijuana users from work as well as a back injury received on the job. Gales Point village chairman Jay Altschaf and Nancy Bailey, also in attendance, recalled taking other residents to the hospital following back and groin injuries sustained while carrying Vulcan’s heavy drilling equipment up the hills during the initial survey phase conducted in late 2019 to early 2020—work that many described as ‘hard labor.’ In a follow-up, Vulcan said that it was aware of one employee being injured and taken by them to Dangriga’s hospital and requiring stitches on his hand and that “in 2021, 94% of their facilities had zero lost-time injuries.” Vulcan Materials and its subsidiaries have incurred 82 workplace safety and health violations for the years 2000-2022, according to the US national policy research center, Good Jobs Still, which aggregates information across US federal agencies.
The day’s event didn’t proceed as Vulcan hoped once it began. Community members almost immediately shared their exasperation with the meeting’s format to the Vulcan representatives and the media. Several described the separate tents as a “divide and conquer” strategy, and voiced dissent to the representatives for what some felt was a manipulative tactic to deceive attendees. Meanwhile, Vulcan representatives assured them that it considered the three information tents a means to limit a small number of personalities from dominating a ‘town-hall-style’ panel meeting. The community members offered to move the chairs and tents to alter the meeting format, but Vulcan maintained their preference for their original plan, later adding it had hoped to provide greater opportunities to address individual concerns.
Forty-five minutes after the meeting began, a few of the village’s drummers, including local legends Emmett Young and Bombay, got out their instruments under the ‘Community Impact’ tent. They played while others danced and sang. For thirty minutes they transformed a small portion of the event into a gathering of joyful resistance, with various elders stepping in for a dance. The musical protest started to disband once several in the crowd encouraged those playing to depart the field altogether rather than wait for Vulcan to change their mind. By 3:14 p.m., many who had arrived from the village left the field, remaining at their vehicles across the road, at the school grounds, or at neigboring residents’ yards, while a few continued to visit the tents and talk to Vulcan’s representatives.
Of those that departed the field, Andrewin, Jr. was among them. He stated he viewed the company’s resistance to changing the meeting format as another instance where the mining company was attempting to deceive the villagers, and take advantage of their individual unawareness of mining to persuade them. Bailey, owner of Manatee Lodge, voiced agreement with that interpretation of the day’s event. She and several others wore shirts made for the day with the slogan “Nah Play We Fi Idyat.”
At the end of the meeting at 4:00 p.m., Jimmy Flemming of Vulcan Materials said that while he was somewhat disappointed by the meeting, he and Vulcan were undeterred in commencing with the Environmental Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and continuing in their talks with the people of Gales Point. The US company is committed to buying the White Ridge Farms property and is currently working through its shortlist of potential consulting firms that would prepare the document for review by the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC), who would then vote and make a recommendation to the Department of the Environment.
Since then, CEO of the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Kenrick Williams, has told News5 that “[Vulcan’s mine] may not be an investment that has the support of the government” and that they would hold a preliminary meeting with them by week’s end. It is yet to be determined if Vulcan will succeed in rallying the necessary public support for its mining interests. For now, those opposed in the village seem to outnumber its advocates, and they are continuing in their efforts to preserve Gales Point’s unique ecologies and the sustainable life many have cultivated in this Kriol community.