An hour's drive from Goa's luxury resorts, Indian mining companies are wrecking the land and breaking laws.
Ramesh Gauns, an English and geography school teacher, gets into an argument with a security guard. The site is a long barbed wire fence that slopes uphill just outside an iron ore site operated by the Dempo Mining Co. in his native Goa, on the western coast of India. "You can't take pictures, this is private property," the guard says to Gauns and a reporter. Gauns is used to confrontation with the mining companies. "I know what you're doing here," he shouts. "It's illegal! You can't scare us!" By this time, the reporter has already snapped a handful of shots of the lake below -- which is dyed the color of dried blood from the mine's runoff.
Gauns, 58, is a perennial protestor in Goa. He has demonstrated against the caste system, religious rituals and, most recently, what he believes to be environmental crimes. His latest fight started three years ago, when he went to a public hearing on a proposed iron ore mine on the banks of the river in his home town, Bicholim. He mobilized the community, filed a complaint with the state environmental agency, then took his cause to the Delhi High Court, which put the project on hold.
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He hopes he will be as successful with his latest target, the Dempo mine. It is there that the residents of Sirigaon filed a petition to the Bombay High Court in June 2008, complaining that their wells were drying up and that their fields were ruined because of silt from the mines. The court directed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, an autonomous government body, to investigate.
That report, out since March, validates the villagers' complaints, and says the companies should replenish the aquifer, restore the damaged rice fields and stabilize the mine waste -- measures that might take 18 months at a total cost of $1.4 million. The court has not yet decided how to proceed -- prompting activists like Gauns to collect more data against the mines.
Most Indians know nothing of the standoff. Nor do the hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists who flock to Goa for its sparkling beaches, luscious greenery, rave parties and Cancun laxity. But the state is also rich in iron ore, and 90% of its length (65 miles) is in various stages of open-pit mining.
Most resorts are an hour's drive away from the mines, but the mining industry isn't quite out of sight. From the sandy shores of the beach resorts, sunbathers can see barge after barge, fully-loaded with mine slag, every morning on the Arabian Sea.