Despite legacy court case, Zambian Vedanta mine pollution continues

Filed 2h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Sneaky

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Zambia's government is investigating a chemical spill near Chingola allegedly tied to Konkola Copper Mines, majority-owned by Vedanta Resources, after residents reported discolored water and dead fish in the Kafue River on September 28.

The environment ministry says a leaking pipe and an overflowing pollution control dam were to blame, and has ordered the company to assess its other tailings infrastructure; KCM, for its part, contests responsibility and wants a 'fact-based investigation.'

This is not KCM's first pollution rodeo — a 2008 spill led to a UK legal case settled in 2021 with payouts to thousands of villagers, no liability admitted — and the company only resumed operations in 2024 after a stint in government-ordered liquidation over tax evasion and environmental pollution.

Under Zambian law, the maximum penalty for major toxic discharges tops out at about $14,000, a figure dwarfed by the scale of the copper operation and the government's own ambitions to triple national output.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A company gets caught polluting the same river twice over two decades and the worst that can happen on paper is a fine smaller than a used pickup. The government wants more copper out of the ground, which is a funny thing to want badly right after ordering an investigation into the ground getting poisoned. Somebody down the road would call that keeping a fox on retainer to watch the henhouse, just because he promised to file a report.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Sneaky · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0