BUYAT BEACH, Indonesia -- Rafli Paputunang emerged from the shadows inside the wood-plank shack, and by the faint glow of a kerosene lamp, he exposed a lump on the back of his left knee the size of a tennis ball. Then another fisherman, Respi Bawole, came forward, pointing to a pair of smaller tumors in his jaw and cheek.
One after another, residents of this impoverished beachfront village stepped up to display similar growths. A mother lifted the arm of her young daughter to reveal a lump under it. Another man pulled back his T-shirt to expose a tumor on his shoulder.
Mansour Lombonaung, a former fisherman, said the dumping of waste into Buyat Bay preceded massive fish kills.
(Alan Sipress -- The Washington Post)
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For the residents of Buyat Beach, the cause of their affliction seems as obvious as the three-story industrial station rising at the entrance to their village, a structure of pipes and girders that, until last month, pumped an average of 1,700 tons of mining waste a day beyond the pounding surf.
The villagers blame Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp., the world's largest gold-mining company, for poisoning their idyllic tropical bay with arsenic and mercury.
"Before Newmont came, we never had these problems," said Paputunang, 34.
Earlier this month, police capped a three-month investigation by asking prosecutors in the eastern province of North Sulawesi to proceed with criminal charges against six Newmont executives, including two Americans, for contaminating the bay. The six executives, including Richard B. Ness, director of the local subsidiary, Newmont Minahasa Raya, face up to 10 years in prison.
But Newmont officials have rejected the police allegations, saying that regular testing since mining began in 1996 has shown that mercury and arsenic levels in Buyat Bay are far below the limits set by Indonesian regulations. The company stopped mining in North Sulawesi three years ago when it exhausted the site and finished processing ore in August.
"The tailings do not pollute the bay," said Kasan Mulyono, a spokesman for Newmont in Indonesia, referring to waste products from its operations. "Based on our information from health authorities in Indonesia and North Sulawesi, there is no indication our tailings caused any health problems for local villagers."
Newmont's assertions of innocence are partly supported by a study completed last month for the World Health Organization (WHO).
"The environment has not become contaminated with methylmercury at present as indicated by the low mercury levels in fish," the report said. The study team, which included officials from Japan, Indonesia and WHO, further concluded that the concentration of arsenic and other metals in villagers' hair was below toxic levels.
Though doctors said some of the village's 300 residents are unquestionably ill, the cause remains at least as murky as the waters. The court case, according to police, is based on their own studies.
According to police Lt. Col. Kurianto: "From the results of our investigation, which consisted of taking and analyzing samples in a number of places such as in Buyat River, Buyat Beach, Ratatotok Beach and at Newmont, and also talking to witnesses as well as getting expert analysis of experts, we came to the conclusion that Newmont has polluted Buyat Beach. This company has broken our environmental law."
The police said they were unfamiliar with the specifics of the study conducted for WHO.
Before Newmont began culling gold from the earth, this was an isolated region of fishing villages set along coves fringed by forest and coconut groves. The district's main link to the rest of Indonesia remains a 70-mile ribbon of narrow road that snakes through mountain jungle to the provincial capital, Manado.
