The Camio Story Part 2

Drill locations that we know about
 in the Glenhordial area 2018

The  night after finding out about the prospecting for gold that was happening in our local area I was restless and slept badly .  I had every right to be, for my mind kept dredging up memories from a different part of my life. Back in the 80's I spent some time in Australia and lived for a while near what was probably the biggest copper, lead, silver  and zinc mine in the world at that time  Mount Isa.  Taken over by  Glencore  in 2013.

Not withstanding the absolute and total devastation of the environment local to the city of Mount Isa, its diseased tentacles reached into every aspect of the lives of the folk who lived there.  Mount Isa had a history of contamination from emissions, the authorities were aware of lead emissions since the 1930's. However the mine always denied it and spent decades  rebutting  the  research that linked the contamination to its mining and smelting operations.

In Feb 2017 Mount Isa Mines released the official report into the lead contamination that has blighted the city for decades.The report, commissioned by the mine’s owner, Glencore, and produced by researchers at the University of Queensland, says that household dust contaminated by airborne lead from the mining and smelting operations is the dominant source of the city’s exposure.

Processing all of this over and over again  I decided as I lay tossing and turning  that I would make a stand against any mining in Northern Ireland.   Awareness had to be raised  and there was a need for our local communities to be educated  to all of the possible  consequences mining could bring to our local area. That is all the details that are brushed over in the glossy marketing brochures and the sexy online sales campaigns.

Mount Isa Smelting Stacks

Where to start ? Apart from my lived experience near the mining town of Mount Isa in North Queensland I knew virtually nothing about mining. So spent the next three months reading documents like:

•  Guidebook for Evaluating Mining Project EIA
•  Gold Production from beginning to end :What gold companies do to get the shiny metal into our hands by Mariusz Skonieczny and
• Gold Inside the Race for the world's most Seductive Metal Matthew Hart
• Scottish Gold Neil DL Clark

Whilst still feeling ill equipped for the job in hand at least I felt I had some back ground knowledge  to make a start and a stand  against toxic mining in the Sperrins in Northern Ireland. The next thing was to raise awareness, I started to write about it in as many ways as possible . Starting with a simple  email out to a few folk that I thought would be interested relating to them what I had discovered about the potential  mining camp being set up  all across the Sperrin mountains and beyond . We at once started a facebook page calling it CAMIO. Cooperation Against Mining in Omagh  followed almost immediately by an Instagram and Twitter account and we also called a public meeting . This was to be in the Bamboo Loft .

 Eighty people came to that meeting  Gordon Dunn from CAMIO  and Fidelma O Kane from Save Our Sperrins (SOS)  delivered the first CAMIO  presentation . Many parties with vested interests turned up , there were the folk from the Greencastle Peoples Office , there were folk from Dalradian, there were neighbours from Glenhordial, there were people there from Omagh town. We had the press and also local politicians .  There were other campaigners from across the Sperrins. It was an interesting meeting, one that produced  more questions than answers.  More about this in the next post.