Wassa District, Ghana

On October 16, 2001, a tailings dam burst at the Tarkwa gold mine in the Wassa West District of Ghana sending thousands of cubic meters of mine waste into the Asuman River and contaminating it with cyanide and heavy metals. The Tarkwa mine is operated by Gold Fields Ghana, a South African gold mining company. The disaster left more than one thousand people without access to drinking water. Virtually all life forms in the river and its tributary were killed. Hundreds of dead fish, crabs, and birds lay on the banks of the river and floated to the surface.

"People have lost their clean drinking water and their livelihood as they can no longer sell or eat produce from their farms through which the river runs. Gold Fields should not hide from their responsibility for damages.  We need to demand compensation for those directly affected by mining disasters."  --Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, executive director, WACAM

Once known as the Gold Coast in colonial times, Ghana is Africa's second largest producer of gold after South Africa. The spill at Tarkwa was one of five cyanide spills in Ghana over a period of seven years which have polluted water supplies and forced many families to abandon their farms.  To make the situation even worse, in January 2003, water from an abandoned underground mine at Tarkwa seeped into the Asuman River creating new worries of water contamination.

Gold mining in Ghana has been touted by the government of Ghana and international financial institutions as the path to economic development. Massive privatization of the mining sector began in 1986 under a World Bank-IMF Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Environmental regulation was minimized. As a result of the favorable investment climate, 70 to 85 percent of the large-scale mining industry is now foreign-owned. But communities are feeling the toll. In the Wassa area, mining displaced 30,000 people between 1990 and 1998. At the same time, mining has caused social turmoil in affected communities by taking away large tracts of land from farmers, often using force and without adequate compensation.

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