In the first six months of 2003, the Salem Harbor Power Station received 76,574 tonnes of coal from the Cerrej?n Zona Norte mine in northern Colombia, and 51,122 tonnes from the La Loma mine, operated by the Drummond Company. In the first half of 2004, it received 42,504 tonnes from Cerrej?n Zona Norte, and 46,210 tonnes from Drummond.
Like other U.S. coal-fired power plant operators, PG&E Energy Trading Company and US-Gen New England Power turned to Colombian coal in the 1980s and 1990s for a combination of reasons: the high-quality, low-sulfur coal from Colombia's mines burned cleaner, allowing power plants to comply with environmental standards without investing in costly equipment, the price was low, and consumers didn't know or care where their coal came from.
Some U.S. coal mining companies, like Exxon and Drummond, were closing their U.S. mines to move production to Colombia where they could pay lower wages and taxes, enjoy profit repatriation and lax environmental standards--and rely on paramilitary death squads to keep their workers and local villagers from protesting poor working conditions, environmental destruction, and forced displacement.
Cerrej?n Zona Norte, the largest open-pit coal mine in the world, began as a joint venture between Exxon and the Colombian government in the 1980s; in the early 2000s it was sold to a consortium of three multinational mining companies: BHP Billiton (British/Australian), Anglo-American (South African), and Glencore, S.A. (Swiss). In 1995, El Cerrej?n's workers were earning about $3.32 per hour, and 14 workers were killed due to unsafe conditions in the mine during its first 11 years of operations. A representative of the indigenous Wayuu people who inhabited the area surrounding the mine visited Salem in the spring of 2002 and told us that the coal burned in our power plant "has its origins in violence. Our communities have suffered greatly. Their human rights have been violated, their territory has been usurped, their houses destroyed and demolished, and they have had to shed their blood in order for this coal to arrive in Salem."
The story of the Drummond mine in Colombia is no better. Union miners in Alabama earn approximately $3000 a month; in Colombia, Drummond pays between $500 and $1000 a month to its workers. Clearly, it was more cost-effective for the family-owned Drummond Company to close its Alabama mines and shift production to Colombia, particularly because paramilitary troops controlled the region around the mine. In 2000, union leaders requested permission to sleep in the mine facility between their shifts because of increasing threats from the paramilitaries who were emboldened by Company flyers equating the union with left-wing guerrilla groups. The mine owners refused, and in February 2001 paramilitary troops stopped a company bus taking workers out of the mine, shot and killed the union president, and dragged the vice president away. His body was found a day later with clear signs of torture. They went to the home of the secretary-treasurer, Francisco Ruiz, and finding him not there, killed his younger brother. Ruiz fled the country; he also came to Salem to tell his story to citizens who were unknowingly consuming Drummond's Colombian coal in the fall of 2003.
All of the union and community leaders who have come from Colombia's coal mines to Salem have brought a similar message. They are not against foreign investment, and they are not against coal mining. But they want foreign investment, and coal mining, to respect human rights and the environment. The companies that buy their coal, and the citizens that benefit from it, need to demand that these conditions be met.
