Save Our Sperrins - The fight against extractivism
Originally published in Rupture 11 as part of the special feature on Land.
Interview with Fidelma O’Kane by Cian Prendivillle, with assistance from RS.
Rupture is pleased to publish this article on Save Our Sperrins, a community campaign set up to defend the Sperrin mountains in Co. Tyrone from mega mining. We sat down virtually with Fidelma to discuss the campaign. Grammar and wording in some quotes have been edited for readability, but no meaning has been changed.
In January 2016, Dalradian, a Canadian mining company, announced that they were going to build a gold mine and cyanidation plant in the Sperrin Mountains. Cyanidation is the process of using cyanide to extract gold from rock. It involves crushing the rock to the onsistency of fine powder and floating it in a sodium cyanide solution. One ounce of gold could produce anything from 20 to 80 tonnes of waste rock.
The local community in Tyrone was horrified at the prospect. Once the gold ore is extracted, the waste is dumped in a ‘dry stack facility’ planned to be 54 metres high. The rock doesn’t only contain gold, it also has sulphide in it, which can turn into sulfuric acid when exposed to rain. That subsequently runs over the rest of the waste and strips out other heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium, copper and more. Dalradian applied for discharge consents to release 24 heavy metals into the two neighbouring rivers.
“The rock doesn’t only contain gold, it also has sulphide in it, which can turn into sulfuric acid when exposed to rain.”
Many of the residents were against the project and appalled at the damage it would cause to the area. But community members who tried to fight against the company were up against bureaucratic hurdles designed to stifle them, financial pressures to sway their opinions, and even claims of anonymous death threats.
Discovering the plans
Fidelma O’Kane first heard about plans for gold mining in her community three years prior, at Christmas in 2013: “Some of our neighbours said to us, oh, there's a company giving out Christmas hampers. You just go to their office and you get a Christmas hamper.” She was immediately suspicious, “I said, ‘that's strange. You don't get a Christmas hamper for nothing. There's no such thing as a free lunch.’"
Around the same time a neighbour had contacted her husband to write a letter. As a university-educated member of the community, he was seen as someone that could help with these sorts of things. The neighbour was restoring an old house that belonged to his grandfather and had been served an enforcement notice to stop because it was too close to a proposed explosive store.
Her husband then investigated a bit further and discovered these proposals were from a gold mining company. He became stressed, but Fidelma reassured him:
“I remember saying to him, ‘Don't be worrying yourself about it.’ I was naive. I said, ‘ The government wouldn't allow anything that would harm the people or harm the water.’”
Fidelma was certain of this because the surrounding rivers are Special Areas of Conservation. These are home to freshwater pearl mussels, Ireland's only globally endangered species. They're very rare and can live up to 140 years, but they need clean water. As Fidelma thought it must be a testament to the water and those rivers that they have the biggest population of freshwater pearl mussels than anywhere in Europe, she believed, “Well, we have government departments and we have regulations and laws, and that'll not happen.”
Dalradian get their first green light
To Fidelma and her husband’s disappointment, in 2014 Dalradian got permission to dig a 2km “exploratory tunnel” for 3 years to try to find gold or other metals. But still, Fidelma was hopeful. There were 44 conditions attached. For example, if any pollution went into the river, Daldadian would have to stop the work immediately, which seemed positive at the time. Within a few months, two conditions were withdrawn. One of the original conditions was that they couldn't build on active peatland or active bog. However, when the explosive store was built, it was built on an active bog.
In Issue 8 of Rupture, Patrick Flynn wrote about the importance of protecting Ireland peatlands, calling them “Ireland’s Coral Reef” for their biodiversity and their value as a carbon sink. In the same vein, Fidelma highlights the destructiveness of Dalradian’s plans to build on peatlands: “In their 2017 plans, 74 acres of peat land would have to be removed to build their infrastructure. Now with the climate crisis, climate change and all that, we know that peat and bogland is a great carbon store.”
Fidelma says that the company has applied for a water abstraction licence. She describes gold mining as very water intensive, “To get enough gold to make a wedding ring requires 8,000 litres of water. So, Dalradian needs a huge amount of water and they have applied as part of their planning for a water abstraction licence to extract half a million gallons of water per day, every day of the year for 20 years from the peatland surrounding their proposed site. What will that do to the water table? It could dry up the bogland water table, which risks killing the bog.”
“While the state was failing to protect their community and environment, Fidelma and others were taking action themselves”
The three year exploration licence was due to end in January 2017, with the company required to seal the tunnel and restore the site. Seven years on, the site is still open and the licence has been extended again and again. Fidelma says they now have an application to continue until 2025.
While the state was failing to protect their community and environment, Fidelma and others were taking action themselves. In June 2015, they set up the group, Save Our Sperrins.
Planning application submitted
When Dalradian submitted their planning application for mining and on-site processing in November 2017, it was 10,000 pages long – the biggest planning application in the history of Ireland, North or South. It took the group months to read it and to write objections. In autumn 2019, the company submitted a first addendum that was 15,000 pages. In 2020, a second addendum of 20,000 pages was added.
On top of the time and effort required to read through the application, the group was told that if they wanted a copy, it would cost them around £1,000. Save Our Sperrins would not give in. “But we thought, why would we give them £1,000? So instead, we used to take flasks and sandwiches in with us to County Hall where there was a public copy. I would sit and read and read and take notes and take photos of pages. It was very difficult.”
The campaign succeeded in mobilising community objections, with approximately 50,000 objections lodged in the planning portal. The group have been all over Ireland gathering objections; they attended the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, and talked to other groups throughout Ireland. They wrote sample objections and made a thousand copies of each, while other people did their own, “The largest number of objections ever in the past in the North was 4,000 and here we have 50,000.”
In the 2020 addendum, Darlradian pledged to drop plans for cyanidation in Ireland, instead saying they would export the ore abroad, however the campaigners are skeptical. “Save Our Sperrins believe it may not be true as Dalradian’s 2016 feasibility study stated that goldmining in the Sperrins would only be financially viable if cyanide was used onsite”.
“We never took the soup”
Fidelma and the community's opposition is staunch and they are ready to put in whatever effort is needed. The group travelled to London in December 2021 to lobby politicians there, and attended a ‘Mines and Money’ Conference. Fidelma remembers speaking to two engineers at the conference who told them, ”You're Dalradian's worst nightmare,” which the group took as a compliment. They asked the campaigners, “If Dalradian gave you £20,000 each, would you go away?”, to which Fidelma replied, “If they give us £20 million each, we wouldn't go away.” “We said money doesn't matter. We never took the soup” she says of the incident.
““To Dalradian it’s all about money, but to us it’s about our home, our land, our air, our water, that future generations will be able to live here.””
As Fidelma notes, money is unimportant to Save Our Sperrins; to the community members in the group, it’s about their land and their health and that of the future generations. Its members ask, “Will our children be able to live in the Sperrins? Will our grandchildren and future generations be able to live here? That's what's important”, Fidelma continues. “It's not about money. To Dalradian it's all about money, but to us it's about our home, our land, our air, our water, that future generations will be able to live here.”
The company’s primary interest was money, and so was their primary strategy. They tried to “divide and rule” the local community by setting up the Dalradian Community Fund, giving money to different individuals and community groups, like sports clubs and charities, on the condition that you agree not to speak or act against Dalradian and consent to be used in their publicity. Fidelma says they've been doing this since 2014, “some people initially signed up but they subsequently returned the money and had great trouble getting their names removed from their supporters list.”
Only it doesn’t stop at charitable community donations. UN Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor has raised concerns about reports of “physical assault, intimidation & death threats” against Save Our Sperrin’s activists. Fidelma says her husband was one of those who received anonymous threats: “A policeman and policewoman came to our house and told us they were just delivering a message that there was a credible death threat against him. I asked who the message was from? Was it a group, an individual, a phone call, a letter? They said they were only delivering a message that their sergeant had asked them to deliver. And two other men received the same threat.”
She says they’ve received phone calls with threats of sexual harassment and violent threats against their sons. There are also many claims of anti-mining community members being physically assaulted, publicly harassed and verbally abused.
The political response
While all of this went on at the local community level, Fidelma has also been asking the main political parties to back the campaign. “They tell you out of one side of their mouth, it's bad for the environment and you're doing a good job. The other side of their mouth says, it'll bring jobs to the area. It'll help the economy. That's what the local parties are saying, except People Before Profit have come out and said they're against it and they have supported us.”
Individuals in every party have come to the group to express support, but given their experience with the main parties, they opted to rely on independents. In 2019, they stood an anti-gold mining candidate, Emmett McAleer, and he was the first candidate elected in the Mid-Tyrone area of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council.
Fidelma says, “Sinn Féin passed a motion at their Ard Fheis, but the words were chosen very carefully. They were against the use of cyanide in gold mining and against multinational companies. So if it was an Irish company, does that mean it's all right? We need to try and get these parties on board. It’s their children and their grandchildren. It’s short term gain against long term destruction.”
An extra twist in the tale is that the gold formally belongs to the British Crown estate, which, according to Fidelma, “has granted an “option lease agreement” for Dalradian for 300,000 acres in counties Tyrone and Derry. If they mine gold, then the crown estate gets 4%. According to Dalradian, there's $3 billion dollars worth of gold here.”
“Greenwashing Gold”
Government roll out red carpet for polluters
Save Our Sperrins would not simply accept the noncommittal political talk and the greenwashing lies. The campaign took it upon themselves to investigate how this big Canadian company ended up in Sperrins.
They learned that members of the Irish and Stormont governments regularly go to a large annual mining conference, Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), that is attended by thousands of stakeholders, so they sent two members to the conference in 2018.
Fidelma relays the events: “We sent them out to pose as investors. We got these two enrolled and sent them out, Emmett and Sinéad. They said they were the only two that didn't have grey hair. Dalradian was doing a presentation on two of the days, so they went. As soon as the Chief Executive had finished speaking, they got up and they said, ‘We're from Ireland and we came to tell you that you're not welcome in our country and there will be no gold mining in Ireland. We're completely opposed to it. We're telling the people here, the shareholders and the prospectors, don't waste your money because you'll have no return because it won't be allowed.’ Patrick Anderson, the chief executive of Dalradian, ran off the stage and ran out of the side door. The man who was chairing the meeting said he had never seen this in all his 20 years at PDAC.”
Highlighting the dangers of extractivism to the south as well as the north, Minister of State and Galway West Fine Gael TD Seán Kyne gave a keynote address to the conference entitled ‘Ireland: Open for Business’, in which he invited the assembled mining companies to Ireland, assuring them they could avail of tax concessions and streamlined planning
Direct action to stop mining
This is not the only direct action the campaign has taken, Fidelma notes, “One man tied himself to a drill rig and stopped the ‘exploration’ for a day. Another man chained himself to Dalradian’s gates. That man’s a lorry driver, and he was in court about 30 times on one charge of ‘aggravated trespass’, losing a day’s pay every time.”
She questions the policing of these actions, “It seems as if the judges don't really want to hear these cases because in one way they're very petty. We do no damage, and yet the police are on call, speed dial with Dalradian. If we had a car accident or a burglary, you'd be waiting hours and hours and hours for police to come. Yet if you go up to Dalradian’s compound, police are there within 15 minutes, three car loads of them.”
“Originally, the police had billed Dalradian almost half a million pounds for policing, but they apparently refused to pay and then in September 2022, the police said that they were now going to give free security instead, and so they dropped the bill against Dalradian.”
Waiting for a hearing
The decision lies with the currently unoccupied Stormont office of Minister for Infrastructure. However, a previous Minister (Nicole Mallon of the SDLP) ordered a public inquiry to be held by a Planning Appeals Commission, meant to be independent. All of the relevant government departments would come in and have their say and so would Dalradian and so would ordinary people.
Fidelma says they knew that with Dalradian having around 40 consultants and experts on their payroll, the community group expertise would be called into question. “We thought, we can go on and say it'll poison the water here, the land, and our health, but they'll say you're not a hydrologist. We feel we need to get some experts to help us present our case.” Save Our Sperrins started crowdfunding in June 2023, supported by different groups. They have raised around £30,000, but their target is £100,000. Fidelma has faith they will “get whatever we need to sort it out.”
Even though it was announced nearly two years ago, no date has been set for the hearing. Fidelma says they should get three months notice, but have heard it will be before the end of this financial year – March 2024. The venue will have to be huge because anyone who has put in an objection is entitled to come.
Once the case is heard, the report could take up to a year to be written and the recommendation made to the Minister for Infrastructure, who makes the final decision.
The group has considered all possible outcomes, Fidelma says. “Our last resort then is another judicial review if we have legal grounds. After that, if it still goes ahead, it'll be bodies lying on the ground stopping the diggers.”
Fidelma O’Kane is a the Secretary of the Save Our Sperrins campaign which can be found on facebook and X @saveoursperrins and on instagram @save_our_sperrins