In 1969 the first of three aluminium smelters was built in Iceland at Straumsvík, near Hafnafjörður, on the South West side of Reykjavík by Alusuisse (subsequently Rio Tinto-Alcan). In 1998 a second smelter was constructed by Century Aluminum (now a subsidiary of controversial mining giant Glencore), at Hvalfjörður near Reykjavík, and in 2007 the third, run by Alcoa, was completed at Reyðarfjörður in the remotely populated East of the country. The Icelandic Government had been advertising the country’s vast ‘untapped’ hydroelectric and geothermal energy at ‘the lowest prices in Europe’ hoping to attract jobs and industry to boost Iceland’s already very wealthy but somewhat fishing dependent economy. The industry, which would permanently change Iceland’s landscape with mega-dams, heavy industry scale geothermal plants and several kilometer long factories, was promoted by the Icelandic Government and the aluminium companies as ‘good employment for a modern age’. However, ten years after the flagship Alcoa Fjarðaál project was completed, unemployment is higher than it was in 2005, and Iceland’s economy has become dependent on an industry which is vulnerable to commodity cycle slumps and mass job losses. Worse, the price charged for Iceland’s energy is tied to the price of aluminium and analyses of the country’s 2008/9 economic crisis suggest it was exacerbated by the poor terms of Iceland’s late industrialisation. Yet demands for further industrialisation remain, and more than 1000 Icelanders are employed in the aluminium sector.

This article exposes the conditions inside Iceland’s aluminium smelters based on interviews with workers conducted in 2012. The stories from two smelters share correlating accounts of being forced to work in dangerous conditions under extreme pressure, and without adequate safety equipment, leading to serious accidents which are falsely reported by the companies. These shocking allegations require serious attention by the trade unions, Icelandic government and health and safety authorities. This especially in the current context of labour disputes with the aluminium companies, alongside revelations about the same companies’ tax avoidance schemes and profiteering in the country.

Century, Grundartangi:

A former worker from the Century plant at Grundartangi shared his story, though did not want his identity revealed. Steini (not his real name) had worked at the plant for ten years and only quit recently.

“When I went to work there I thought of it as just a job and it was good pay. My experience of it was that they were taking our labour for cheap and making work us like slaves. The only thing we get out of it is our pay.

There were so many accidents that were their fault, not ours. They put so many rules in place, but you have to break the rules to get the work done, which they are pressuring you to do, then if something goes wrong its all your fault.”

Steini described how bonuses are awarded to the shift according to the number of accidents. If you have an accident and are off work you lower your annual bonus. At first the bonuses included smart new bikes, then they were reduced to a restaurant meal, and finally just pizza and beer.

He described the pressure of the job; how workers are pushed to work harder, but as soon as they get quick at the tasks they add more work so they are even more pressured. Akin to Alcoa Fjardaál in the East of Iceland the turnover rate is around 20% with only a handful of people staying for ten years as he had. Similarly, both Alcoa and Century Aluminum have gradually replaced permanent jobs with contract labour. Increasingly the work force was made up of University students on summer jobs which made the work even more risky as this short term labour was less experienced and more prone to accidents.

Shifts were twelve hours long, for 183 hours/month and the working hours were very unsociable, many at night for three days in a row. Steini described how most of the days off in between shifts were used to sleep and recover energy in order to work again. As the plant was expanded and more pots were added the work got harder.

“Everybody who works in Norðurál [Century] hates it. Most of the people are eating anti-depressants and everything. They hate the company, they hate the work but they are afraid to change and be without work.” He said.

He described how many accidents there were at the factory and how the company avoid paying compensation or having to report the severity of the incident;

“I got a broken finger, I burned my feet and once I had a forklift drop on my arm. I never got any compensation from the company and when I went to insurance companies I could get nothing either. The company ask you to come back to work as soon as you can move and just sit at the computer, then they count that as being ‘well’ in their records so it looks like less ‘work days lost’. The insurance companies also see it this way so it it very hard to get compensation.

One guy was doing something very risky and fell into the [molten aluminium] pot up to his knees. He was on morphine for a few weeks. I remember the health and safety guy coming out of a meeting with him smiling. He had admitted that it was all his own fault.”

Industry standards on reporting discriminate between lost time injuries and restricted work injuries, with the former being taken more seriously. Like Alcoa, Glencore claim that the ‘total recordable injury frequency rate’ (TRIFR) is being reduced annually. Nonetheless ten people died at Glencore’s global operations last year according to their 2015 Annual report, and sixteen in 2014.

Scandals over worker’s rights had previously erupted in Iceland during the construction of several mega power projects for the aluminium industry after the conditions of cheap foreign labour were exposed. More than a dozen Chinese and other foreign workers died during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dam and several Romanian workers suffocated in geothermal pipes on the site of a Reykjavík Energy work camp in Hellisheiði where they worked up to 72 hour weeks.

Steini described the heat of the pot rooms and how restrictive and hot the many types of safety clothing are. As a result most workers chose to use the minimum amount of safety clothing, enabling them to be comfortable and work faster to get bonuses;

“You used as little safety equipment as you could so you could get the job done. When I was in the pot room I just used a paper mask for comfort. I stopped noticing the smell of the gases, then after a period working in the pot lining rooms I went back to the pot room and I really smelt it. It chokes your throat and you know it’s bad.”

‘Pot rooms’ are huge sealed troughs of carbon anodes and aluminium flouride through which up to 320,000 amps of electricity are passed to separate the strongly bonded oxygen from the alumina. Molten aluminium is then ‘tapped’ from the pots and cast into ‘ingots’. The process generates gases including inorganic fluorides, sulphur dioxide, CO2 and perfluorocarbons. Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are extremely potent greenhouse gases lasting up to 50,000 years in the atmosphere. Tetrafluoromethane, the most common PFC is 6,500 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 and its main global source is from aluminium smelters. Sulphur dioxide and fluoride emissions are acidic and can kill or stunt plant growth. Fluoride emissions also build up in the bones and teeth of animals and humans causing Skeletal Fluorosis, which weakens bones and can lead to bone deformation much like arthritis. Farmers living around Centrury’s smelter in Hvalfjörður claim their sheep and horses have got sick and even died from flouride poisoning.

Saga (not her real name) started work in Century Aluminum’s Grundartangi smelter in 2006, before turning twenty. It was her first big job and her introduction to the working world. She was working twelve hour shifts from the outset, and her work began in the pot rooms. Like Steini she described the fallacy of the health and safety training;

“We were told to wear dust-masks because of all the dangerous and unhealthy gases that come out of the pots, also because of the alumina, fluoride and other pollution in the air. You could always smell it all through the mask though. It was emphasized very heavily not to smoke inside because smoking inside the pot-rooms could result in ‘stone-lungs’ in few years time, which is very common amongst smelter-workers. That is because of all the pollution in there. If you would smoke inside, you were inhaling three times more tar and other stuff straight down to your lungs than if you where smoking outside in more normal surroundings. We also learnt that pregnant women are never allowed to enter the pot-rooms because there is a great risk of foetal harm.”

Saga accused Century of extremely low health and safety standards and condemned the company for making workers “repeatedly risk their lives to keep the smelter operational into the next shift”. She described being given second hand protective clothing in poor condition, and claimed that much of the equipment was in need of repair but was still being used as parts were hard to come by. Like Steini she had witnessed and experienced serious injuries, which had been misreported or disguised by asking workers to come in for office days when injured in order to improve the figures on workdays lost due to injury;

“Working for show” you could call it. I have even heard about workers with broken legs being made to show up for hanging out in the office for a few hours just to keep the records clean. It was easy to pressure people with many passive methods, such as bringing down the accident record which means that their shift doesn’t get a reward like the others that went through the year “without” accidents that caused absents.”

She gave a scathing and detailed account of the pressured and dangerous work environment;

“I witnessed others, and found myself, doing dangerous and life threatening things in the smelter. This was not because we had some kind of death wish or thirst for adrenaline but because there was no other way to finish our daily jobs on time. There is no other choice than to climb on that pot, drive that windowless forklift, work on this broken down and not really functioning crane today, not take proper breaks. Be one doing two people’s jobs, drive too fast because you have to hurry and “fixing” things with all possible and impossible ways so they will last just a little bit longer. I have seen people run away, scared for their lives, and then being forced back because somebody has to take care of what went wrong. I have witnessed what happens after a pot explodes.

Far too many people cram themselves into vehicles, because distances are very long and your main transport is your own two legs on the hard concrete floors. These are all labeled as dangerous things to do in there and in theory they are not “really” allowed. For example climbing on pots –which are very often badly closed and have broken lids or holes. Working alone on a crane, which is strictly speaking never allowed, always to be performed by a team of at least two workers. That’s because of the danger of people passing out from the heat, exhaustion, lack of liquid, rest or food, and a crane-operator could very likely be in a critical place when that happens, like over an open pot. Driving vehicles with the lights not working, broken windows or too filthy windows to actually see out is not allowed. Neither is the operation of any vehicles or cranes without proper training, or vehicles and cranes that are broken or not functioning properly. Having your shoes not closed all the way, having an old helmet, old shoes, no dust-mask, standing under an crane in use, not preheating your tools well enough to touch liquid metal or acid. Working in too much loudness, too much darkness or too much pollution. Not getting the breaks that you are entitled to. Teaching yourself how to do things. Working with a person you don’t trust or yourself being in so bad physical state, like suffering illness, fatigue, hunger, pain, that you don’t even trust yourself.

All of these things, I have had to do to finish my duties, just like everybody else in there (at least back then). Of course I could have said no at any given time, but you don’t really want to do that when you know that it is just going to be somebody else, a co-worker who is in the same shoes as you, that will have to take care of it and finish what you left. Everything has to be finished every day no matter what it takes.”

Alcoa Fjarðaál.

The Alcoa plant in the East of Iceland was heralded by the Icelandic Government as the saviour of the waning Eastern economy and a fantastic employment opportunity which would bring young people from Reykjavík to the East. Officials promised up to 1000 permanent jobs, plus another 2.5 jobs created in other sectors for each job in the aluminium industry. Ten years later, however, few of the promised benefits have come to the region, and overall unemployment in Iceland, which was less than 3% in 2005, reached 7.5% in 2009 and remained at 5% 2015.

Alex Smári drove the Alcoa bus from Stöðvarfjörður to Reydarfjörður from 2006 to 2008. He says people in the East believed work in the smelter would be easy, with good pay and plenty of time off, but the reality had turned out to be very different. He described workers returning from their shifts as ‘like corpses’ in the bus, and claims many quit their jobs after a short time. In his opinion the East has not become more thriving as the politicians and company promised, to the contrary “Fjarðabyggd is like a labour camp”.

One worker in the Alcoa Fjarðaál smelter was willing to speak to me though he did not want to be named. Bergur (not his real name) noted the high turnover of workers with many leaving after just a year or two. He claimed around 100 of the 450 employees in the smelter were foreign, suggesting that many in the East simply don’t want to work there. There are only a handful of people who have remained in employment with the company since the smelter opened in 2007.

“Out of twenty people on my shift that started working there five years ago there are only two left. Everyone else quit because they didn’t like working there. The turnover was 20% last year. 20% with all the unemployment in Iceland! It really tells a story.”

Like the Century workers he described how the managers push the workers to work as fast and hard as possible during the shift. However, once they have learnt to work faster the job load simply goes up again.

“The Alcoa building system is devised to suck every bit of what you have. You start with 100 people doing 100 people’s jobs and then you push everyone until 90 people are doing 100 people’s jobs, and then there are 60 and then 50. At Alcoa, everyone gets into the situation where he is working the whole shift doing his absolute best and still walking away with a kick in the butt for not finishing something or other.”

Bergur claimed company people had told them in a meeting that Fjarðaál is the most dangerous of Alcoa’s smelters in Europe. Shifts are twelve hours long and often at night and employees are expected to work 176 hours a month compared with only 142 hours on eight hour shifts at Rio Tinto’s Straumsvík plant near Reykjavík.

There is also a bonus system that rewards the workers for the quantity and quality of aluminium they produce. This means workers effectively get fined when a machine breaks or poor quality alumina is delivered, even though this is out of their control.

“Everything is connected to the bonus. If a crane breaks down and it holds off production it lowers the bonus for everyone. Now we have low quality alumina coming in which means we get through more anodes and that also lowers the bonus. When this situation is going on the workload gets substantially higher, so not only are you working a lot more, but you know you are getting less pay.”

As a result of this pressure Bergur claims the few days off between shifts are usually spent simply sleeping and recovering before work starts again. Contrary to Alcoa’s claims that the workplace is ‘family friendly’ he claims Alcoa Fjarðaál has become known locally as ‘the divorce factory’ since so many couples have separated due to the unsociable hours which affect their relationship.

Bergur also spoke about Alcoa’s use of contract labour, and its effect on worker’s rights and the strength of the unions:

“There are two groups of people working at Alcoa: There are Alcoa employees and there are contractors who are not part of Alcoa. We are doing the same work but they are not members of the unions. By having these two groups they can control the employees more easily and the unity within the factory will be less.”

“We have to live!”

Former Prime Minister of Iceland Halldór Ásgrímsson famously promoted the Alcoa Fjardaál project by proclaiming “we have to live!”. But what kind of livelihood have Icelanders been forced to accept? All of the workers expressed feeling misled by the government and the aluminium companies.

Saga claimed that prospective workers were denied information about the health and safety risks;

“Our government has been been eagerly promoting smelters as very agreeable and good working places for years. Smelters are being promoted in places where people don’t know them, don’t know the dangers, the threats and the health risks, and don’t feel they have a choice. How can a place where you are constantly breathing heavy pollution – alumina, fluoride and dangerous gases – that make you feel like your lungs took a severe beating every time you open up a pot, be a healthy and agreeable working place?”

Bergur analysed the Icelandic government’s claim that the smelter would reverse the East to West migration trend:

“The people who have quit there, who have returned to Reykjavik or whatever…I call those the sensible people. They have moved to the East to work for Alcoa, maybe both man and woman. They come with high hopes and determination to make this work. After working for a year, or a year and a half, the pressure which goes on at the shift becomes too much, and when they realise this is the system and will not change, that they are never going to be in a situation where you are working a relatively easy shift and going home not so tired….this is not going to happen. When they realise that, they quit and get out.”

Steini also questioned the government’s promotion of aluminium smelting as a good employment for Icelanders;

“People in Iceland just wanted jobs, but not necessarily this kind of factory. The question is who put this idea in our minds that the only way to get a job is by having an aluminium smelter?”

Of course, Icelandic smelter workers are not alone in their experience of pollution and dangerous working conditions, and there is much potential to link up with global struggles for workers rights. At Hindalco’s Hirakud aluminium smelter in Odisha, India, workers are taking the company to court asking why they were not told what they were breathing in. They were being moved from the pot-room every four years, told that this was due to the potential health effects of working in such high heats, but the effects of breathing in highly toxic fumes were never mentioned. They believe the company was deliberately concealing the dangers while trying to minimise them.

On top of poor working conditions, employment in the aluminium industry is innately insecure, as it is vulnerable to the peaks and troughs of the commodities supercycle. The recent commodities downturn led to the demise of the UK steel industry, including the likely closure of Port Talbot steel, cutting 11,000 jobs. The workers have already lost part of their pensions, a common phenomenon in the metals industry, as the owners – Tata Steel – claim they cannot afford to pay the full amounts. The rusting skeleton of Century Aluminum’s Helguvík smelter, abandoned midway through construction in 2009, stands as a stark reminder of the false promises and volatility of this industry.

Iceland’s aluminium workers cannot expect their employers, experts in anti-unionising and misleading PR, to protect their rights. Instead, they must properly inform themselves of the risks to their health and security, and contribute to the debate on what constitutes ‘a nice place to work’ in a modern Iceland.

Sources:

Cooke, K. and Gould, M.H. 1991. The health effects of aluminium, a review. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. 111, 163-8.
Aslam M, Khalil K, Rasmussen RA, et al. (October 2003). “Atmospheric perfluorocarbons”. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37 (19): 4358–61.
Dr R. Liteplo and Ms R. Gomes, 2002, ‘Environmental Health Criteria for Fluorides’. International Programme on Chemical Safety, UNEP. http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/…

Indriði H. Þorláksson, economist and former tax director

Frumvinnsla áls – Lýsing á hinni mengandi og orkufreku framleiðslu álbarra

Al Jazeera

Some farmers suspect fluoride from aluminium smelters is making animals sick, but the companies sharply disagree.

Reykjavik, Iceland – For the third summer in a row, hydrogen fluoride has been detected in vegetation samples taken near an aluminium plant in eastern Iceland, worrying farmers and horse owners who fear for their animals’ well-being.

Aluminium plants emit fluoride, a chemical element that can be toxic to animals and humans in high concentrations.

The Environment Agency of Iceland found the concentration of fluoride in grass grazed by sheep exceeded the recommended limits near the town of Reydarfjordur.

Sigridur Kristjansdottir from the Environment Agency told Al Jazeera the high levels this summer were “primarily due to meteorological and geographical factors … This resulted in the results for early June showing relatively high values”.

A press release issued by the Alcoa Fjardaal aluminium plant noted that, despite the spike this summer, average fluoride levels this year are lower than they were in 2013, which in turn were lower than in 2012.

Fluoride is a cumulative poison, meaning that animals and plants often register higher levels of the element as they age. Before the Fjardaal aluminium smelter began operation, the fluoride level in Sigurdur Baldursson’s sheep – who live on the only farm near Alcoa’s plant – were measured as having 800 micrograms per gram (µg/g) of fluoride in their bone ash. That’s well below the recommended limit of 4,000 µg/g in the bone ash of adult sheep, or 2,000 µg/g for lambs.

But samples taken in 2013, recorded the sheep’s fluoride levels between 3,300 and 4,000 µg/g. Baldursson said he expects the next readings to exceed 5,000 µg/g – above the recommended limit.

“The sheep that will be sampled next were born in 2007, and are thus as old as the aluminium plant itself,” he told Al Jazeera.

Nevertheless, Baldursson said he has not noticed signs of ill health in his sheep.

‘I only heard about it by accident’

Bergthora Andresdottir sees things differently from her farm on the other side of Iceland, 25km north of the capital Reykjavik. She said she is constantly phoning the Environment Agency to complain about smoke rising from Century Aluminium’s smelter at Grundartangi, directly across the fjord from her farm.

“I phone them several times a week,” she told Al Jazeera. “But there’s no specific person to talk to, and they don’t help much. Sometimes they claim that the smoke is coming from the neighbouring factory [the Elkem ferrosilicon smelter], but I tell them it isn’t.”

In August 2006, an accident at the Grundartangi plant caused a large amount of fluoride emissions. Riding school owner Ragnheidur Thorgrimsdottir said local farmers were never told about this accident, which meant that sheep, cattle and horses ate fluoride-contaminated grass. “I only heard about it by accident, two years later,” she told Al Jazeera.

That same year, the capacity of the Century plant was increased from 90,000 tonnes of aluminium a year to 220,000. The firm HRV Engineering stated “the increase in fluoride for the autumn months of 2006 in the atmosphere … can partly be traced to the increase in capacity of the smelter”.

Sick horses

Thorgrimsdottir lives about five kilometres southwest of the Grundartangi plant, and owns 20 horses – which she said have been badly affected by fluoride, some so badly that they have had to be put down.

“This is the eighth year in a row that my horses have been sick. Currently three of them are sick, but I’m also keeping an eye on four more,” she told Al Jazeera. Instead of keeping her horses outside all the time, as is the norm during Icelandic summers, she has kept them in at night and given them hay to eat because they do not digest grass properly.

Thorgrimsdottir showed Al Jazeera one of the affected horses named Silfursteinn. “The affected horses walk stiffly, like sticks. They also tend to have lumps and swellings on their bodies,” said Thorgrimsdottir.

When asked about Thorgrimsdottir’s horses, Solveig Bergmann – a public relations officer for Century – said she could not explain their maladies. “I have no explanation. According to veterinarians, the horses … bear symptoms of Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS), which is caused mainly by obesity and lack of exercise,” she said, citing a report by the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (IFVA).

But Thorgrimsdottir said EMS can also be caused by fluoride, and when IFVA vets took samples from the horses she had to put down, they only measured fluoride levels in their bones, not in their soft tissue as she had requested.

Gyda S Bjornsdottir studied the birth rates and health of sheep from 2007 to 2012 in the area close to the Grundartangi plant for her Master’s degree. She found in the areas southwest and northeast of the smelter – which are the most common wind directions in the region – a higher proportion of sheep did not produce any lambs.

“Usually, two to three percent of sheep do not produce lambs. Away from the plant, 2.6 percent of ewes were lambless, whereas in the area southwest of the plant, this figure was 7.4 percent,” she told Al Jazeera. Northeast of the plant, she added, 4.5 percent of ewes did not bear lambs.

“The sheep in the area to the southwest of the plant also show visible signs of tooth damage, which is a clear sign of fluoride poisoning, and poor quality wool,” said Bjornsdottir.

Because the aluminium smelter is next to a ferrosilicon plant that also emits pollutants, Bjornsdottir said she cannot be sure the effects are caused by fluoride, as there were also increased concentrations of sulphur dioxide, nickel and arsenic.

“But the results are consistent with fluoride distribution,” she said.

‘No evidence’ of negative effects

But Bergmann, the Century public relations officer, disagreed. “In research carried out since 1997 in the vicinity of the Century Aluminium smelter at Grundartangi, no evidence has ever been found of negative effects of fluoride on sheep, or any other animal,” she said.

Bjornsdottir, however, pointed out in her thesis that farmers say it is not economically viable to send sick sheep to a veterinarian. Instead, they slaughter the affected sheep at home. As a result, she said she believes the figures are biased, because the sheep monitored by Century for fluoride are healthy animals that are sent to the slaughterhouse.

In a letter sent by Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority to Alcoa in January 2013, Thorsteinn Olafsson – who was responsible for sheep and cattle diseases at that time – said: “There are reasons to suppose that the danger levels for grazing and fodder for Icelandic sheep are even lower than overseas research shows. This needs to be researched even better in the local environment of aluminium plants in Iceland.”

Source: Al Jazeera

See also Hand in Hand: Aluminium Smelters and Fluoride Pollution

More Flouride in Animals Around Aluminium Factories than Elsewhere – Environmental Agency Refuses to Investigate

The truth is that aluminium smelters and serious fluoride poisoning go hand in hand. Aluminium smelting is the largest single producer of fluorides worldwide. These toxic compounds are released from smelters in both gaseous and solid forms. ‘Scrubbers’ are usually used to remove the majority of fluorides from factory smoke today, but when those scrubbers are spent they are also dumped in landfills where the soluble fluorides absorbed into them can leak out into the soil. Fluorides are phytotoxic (toxic to plants) and actually accumulate in vegetation, making long living trees particularly susceptible to fluoride poisoning. When animals or humans eat fluoride polluted plants or meat, or drink fluoride rich water, they can develop ‘fluorosis’ which weakens bones and teeth and can, in extreme cases, lead to bone deformation and birth defects. Fluoride can also build up in soft tissue in the body causing a range of serious health effects¹.

Swollen Jaws and Weak Teeth

In West Iceland, a number of farmers living around the Century Aluminum (Norðurál) smelter in Hvalfjörður have been suffering serious fluoride pollution in their sheep and horses – in particular since a major pollution incident at the factory released large amounts of fluorides in August 2006.

Sigurbjörn Hjaltason and his wife Bergþóra run a sheep farm at Kiðafell on the South side of the fjord, across the water from the 280 thousand ton aluminium smelter and Elkem’s steel alloy factory. Their sheep have recently developed swollen jaws and weak teeth which break easily and are, in some cases, unable to feed properly and have therefore died. Not satisfied with the industry’s own monitoring, they sent a few of their sheep heads for independent investigation and found fluoride levels of up to 1300-1400ppm, against a baseline (normal level) of 300-400ppm. Sigurbjörn and Bergþóra point out that Umhverfisstofnun (The Environment Agency of Iceland) give no maximum level of fluoride permitted in livestock teeth in Century Aluminum’s license, or elsewhere. Norðurál themselves use a guideline that is based on Norwegian research on young deer and suggests that between 1000 and 2000ppm can cause damage to teeth, and above 2000ppm damage is certain to occur. Sigurbjörn and Bergþóra claim that even this guideline is too high to prevent disease and even death of sheep as they have experienced.

Despite complaints regarding the unacceptably high levels for permitted fluoride, filed by Sigurbjörn and Bergþóra to Umhverfisstofnun and MAST (Iceland’s Food and Vetinary Authority), the situation has not improved.

A Story of Silence

Across the fjord, about four kilometers West of the smelter, stands a farm called Kúludalsá. The owner, Ragnheiður Þorgrímsdóttir, runs an outdoor education center and keeps horses for pupils to ride and learn from. She has looked after horses since her childhood without problems, but in 2007 her horses suddenly started to get sick. They developed a build up of material in the neck and became stiff and unwell, in some cases too stiff to be able to walk. In an interview with Saving Iceland, she explained that in August 2006, while Century were expanding their smelter, a failure occurred in the plant’s scrubbing system with the results that raw fluoride was emitted for at least 20 hours. Local farmers were given no warnings or information, “They told no-one about it until many months later when they were forced to do so because the figures showed that something serious had happened” Ragnheiður said.

She wrote to MAST and requested a formal investigation in April 2009. The agency passed her request to Umhverfisstofnun who declined to act on it until two years later under public pressure. Ragnheiður had already sent samples of bones to local labs, discovering fluorine levels about four times higher than the estimated baseline, nevertheless still technically below the legal limit. In May 2011, she told her story on RÚV, Iceland’s National Broadcasting Service; only two days later she received a letter from Umhverfisstofnun, announcing their formal refusal to investigate the matter.

Finally in spring 2011, MAST agreed to investigate samples of horse teeth and bones from Kúludalsá. However, they didn’t examine fluoride in the liver and other organs as they had been requested to do, claiming that fluoride doesn’t build up in the soft tissues. Following their investigation MAST terminated her case, concluding that Ragnheiður could be blamed for the horses’ sickness herself which was due to overfeeding. At this point she decided to take matters into her own hands and sent samples to a foreign laboratory for further analysis. The lab found high fluoride levels in the liver, spleen, kidney and muscles, proving that fluoride had indeed been accumulating in the soft tissue of the animals – and suggesting that this may be an ongoing issue.

She wrote to the Minister of Environment in spring 2012, and later also to the Minister of Industry and Innovation. Finally in autumn 2012 she was able to meet with both of them and explain her situation in detail. She told Saving Iceland that the two ministers listened to her and resolved to further investigate the matter. They have now appointed two experts to look into the matter in more depth.

In an article on her website (Námshestar), published last autumn, Ragnheiður tells her story in detail through the whole period of her dealings with the authorities, from the moment she first noticed the horses’ illness up until the day of the article’s publication. Her conclusion is the following:

I have fought for in-depth research of the horses and their environment for a few years. Eventually, I was forced to do it myself. After the findings of tests on several biological specimens (monitoring that neither Iceland’s Environment Agency nor MAST were willing to conduct) I believe there to be a well-grounded suspicion that the horses are suffering from a metabolic disease (equine metabolic syndrome) as a result of too much fluoride in grass and hay. In addition to causing calcium deficiency in blood and damaging both teeth and bones, fluoride also impacts the activity of the thyroid which operates the body’s metabolism. Fluoride also wears away magnesium and other important substances.

Regarding her dealings with the authorities, she concludes by stating that her experience through the last years has taught her “not to expect important affairs to receive speedy and conscionable process within public administration in Iceland.” In particular she points out how the local authorities have actively ignored repeated warnings about pollution from the Grundartangi industrial complex and appear to be working for the interests of the industry rather than the people. This fits in with the Icelandic government’s original invitation to energy intensive heavy industry in 1995, which was entitled ‘Lowest Energy Prices!’ and promised ‘a minimum of red tape’ on environmental clearance for foreign industrial companies setting up in Iceland.

More Industry: More Pollution: Less Democracy

Century Aluminum (Norðurál) are supposed to measure fluoride levels around their Grundartangi plant, but according to local nature-protection organization, Umhverfisvaktin við Hvalfjörð (Hvalfjörður Environment Watch), the company stops monitoring the wider local area during the winter months – when pollution hangs in the fjord and is more intense – and, instead, only monitor fluoride levels right at the edge of the smelter, thus distorting the annual figures.

In 2011, Saving Iceland reported on the plans to expand the industrial area at Grundartangi in Hvalfjörður in order to house more polluting industries on top of the already existing ferro-silicon and aluminium plants. Despite more than 70 letters of opposition by local farmers, summer hut owners and others, the local authorities have accepted the planned expansion on behalf of the community. In one of these letters, Umhverfisvaktin pointed out that no proper assessment has yet been made regarding increased industrial pollution in the fjord and its environmental and livestock impacts. In response, the local authorities stated that there was no evidence to suggest that this should be taken into account.

The Most Environmentally Sensitive Smelter in the World!

In the beginning of last February, MAST published a report emphasizing the importance of monitoring the impacts of fluoride pollution in Reyðafjörður. The report states that although current fluoride levels are below maximum levels, a blind eye should not be turned to the possibility that too much fluoride will later damage the dental hygiene of young animals currently grazing at the most polluted areas. As their glaze is taking shape during the period from birth until they obtain permanent teeth, fluoride in too high numbers can endanger the quality of the glaze and damage the teeth up to two years post the absorption. Therefore, MAST states, it’s important to examine the bones of slaughtering animals and monitor the teeth of lambs and young sheep, foals and young horses, calfs kept for breeding, heifers and young dairy cattle – increasing both monitoring as well as the sampling locations.

One of the farms affected by fluoride pollution in East Iceland is Kollaleira, where local farmer Guðmundur Beck famously opposed the giant Alcoa smelter, claiming it would destroy the fjord he knew and loved. Guðmundur spoke to us about the recent pollution incident:

The news about fluoride pollution in Reyðarfjörður last autumn was just what had been warned of all the time, although I admit that it happened a few years earlier than I expected. Alcoa is trying to excuse this event as some kind of accident, when it seems to be a clear case of negligence. It certainly doesn’t fit with the widespread propaganda about “the most environmentally sensitive aluminium smelter in the world” that Alcoa has continuously spread around East-Iceland.

This event clearly underlines the profligacy of the aluminium industry and of the Icelandic authorities that allowed their operation. The experience from other smelters here in Iceland shows that it doesn’t matter how much they pollute – the companies are never fined or punished in other ways for breaking their operating license. And their operation is never amended.

____________________
1.  Christopher Bryson, 2004. The Fluoride Deception. Seven Stories Press.

Preface

Glencore are the majority shareholder of Century, the owner of one operational and one half-built smelter in Iceland, it’s key operations for aluminium smelting. But who are Glencore and what are the implications for Iceland? This comprehensive article profiles the world’s biggest commodity broker, who’s only comparable predecessor was Enron. The profile covers the reach and grip of Glencore’s domination of metal, grain, coal and bio-oils markets, allowing it to set prices which profit very few and are detrimental to many. It shows the tight web of connections between the major mining companies and Glencore through shared board history and shared ownership of assets, cataloguing key shareholders (and board members) who’s stakes make them larger shareholders than institutional investors in ownership of Glencore. These connections include Rusal’s co chair Nathaniel Rothschild, a financier with a $40m investment in Glencore, and a personal friend of Peter Mandelson (former EU trade commissioner and British politician) and George Osborne (UK Chancellor).

The article details the human rights and environmental abuses of Glencore at it’s many operations, including the 2009 killing of Mayan indigenous leader Adolfo Ich Chamán who spoke out about Century’s activities in Guatemala under CEO-ship of Peter Jones (still a Century board member). It claims that Glencore is higher than most in the running for most abusive and environmentally detrimental mining company, going where lesser devils fear to tread – trading with Congo, Central Asia and embargoed countries such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and apartheid South Africa. Glencore founder Marc Rich was involved in trading embargoed Iranian oil, and fled the United States in 1983 accused of insider dealing and tax dodging over Iranian deals, becoming one of the 10 fugitives most wanted by the FBI, until he was pardoned by Bill Clinton. Glencore is still run by two of his main men.

Introduction

From Kazakhstan to Australia, taking in the views of Zambia, war-stricken Congo and Angola, cutting across from Siberia to Iceland is a network of mining and metals companies with a catalogue of environmental and community abuse in their wake. In Iceland its  face is Century Aluminum, but behind them, at the heart of this web lies the secretive commodity broker Glencore International of Switzerland. Glencore is about to launch one of the biggest placement of shares, raising $10 Billion, making a lot of people very rich and valuing itself as a company worth $60Bn. In this article we start to throw a spotlight on just how Glencore makes its money and how Iceland is just one of many victims of a company built on ruthless exploitation.

On the surface, Glencore’s wealth comes from the buying and selling of the world’s commodities (see below for more detail), specialising in grain and metal markets. However, what is unusual for a commodity broker is that it invests heavily in the very companies whose produce it is trading. Its interests are global, from the breadbaskets of Russia, to zinc mines in Kazakhstan, copper and cobalt interests in Congo and Angola, and aluminium in Iceland.

It is the latter that ties Glencore into the Icelandic economy through its 44% ownership of Century, as well as membership of the board of directors. Century is the owner of the Grundartangi smelter and is behind the building of another plant at Helguvik, for which a number of controversial new geothermal and hydro power plants would need to be built. There is also a doubt if enough energy to run a smelter in Helguvík actually exists. Glencore controls 38% of the global trading market in aluminium. Of this, 50% of this comes from Century and UC Rusal, the Russian Aluminium giant (of which Glencore owns 8.8%).

The result is a private network of personal ties and business relationships so tight that what matters to Century also matters to Glencore. The Icelandic government may be doing deals with Century, but Glencore is always present in the background, bringing unsavoury alliances to this particular bed. There are a lot of unanswered questions over how and with whom Glencore chooses to invest. One only has to look at its principle partners and deals to see it does not shy away from exploitation of war torn countries or making alliances with men whose fortunes carry with them heavy taints of corruption. Despite all the exuberance in financial circles at the profits to be made by the Glencore share offering, a few more level-headed traders and journalist are wondering if there should be more caution, especially given how little is known about the inner workings of the company and just how manages to pull off so many exceptionally profitable deals.

It is also worth noting that the last time the world saw such a commodity broker dominate a market to this extent ended up going very sour – that commodity broker being Enron.

Who are Century Aluminum?

Century is a company that specialises in smelting aluminium. It was founded in 1995 when various interests controlled by Glencore were brought together. In 1996 it was spun off as a public company^.1 As well as its Icelandic sites, which it owns outright, it owns or has a share in aluminium plants at Ravenswood, West Virginia, at Hawesville (100%), Kentucky (80% owned with the rest owned by Glencore), and at Mt. Holly, South Carolina (50%, the other half owned by Alcoa Inc). In the past it has had interests in the Congo. As a global player it is the 10th largest producer.

Its ownership remains dominated by Glencore at 44%, with the majority of the other shareholders being held in relatively small amounts by US institutional investors (hedge funds etc.).² It is clear from Century’s website that Iceland is a major part of their business and strategy and three executives of its Icelandic operations are listed as key management.

Key People

Gunnar Gudlaugsson, Plant Manager of Nordural Grundartangi

Joined Nordural in 2008, from Straumsvik, the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter, where he had served for over ten years.

Ragnar Gudmundsson, Managing Director of Nordural

Nordural is the holding company for the Icelandic interests of Century. Previously Chief Financial Officer of Basafell, prior to which he was a senior manager at Samskip, both leading companies in Iceland.

Wayne R. Hale, Chief Operating Officer

Joined Century in 2007, having previously been with Sual in Russia (it was Sual, Rusal and Glencore’s Russian aluminium interests which merged to form UC Rusal). Has also worked for Kaiser and Rio Tinto.

Peter Jones, Director

2001-2006 was President & Chief Operating Officer of Inco Ltd. Former President & CEO of Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co (retired at the end of 2009).

David J. Kjos, Vice President of Operations in Iceland

Former manager of Cygnus Inc, an aerospace manufacturing company; prior to that was with the United Development Co & Kaiser Aluminium & Chemical Co.

Logan W. Kruger, CEO, President

Joined November 2005. Before Century, from 2003 he had been a leading executive at Inco, the large nickel mining company where he over saw operations in the Asia / Pacific region, including the Goro Nickel operation in New Caledonia and other projects in Indonesia, remaining as a director of the Indonesian subsidiary P.T. Inco (Inco has since been acquired by the Brazilian nickel miner Vale). He has also served as head of Anglo American’s operations in Chile (2002-03) and as CEO of the Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co in Canada (1998-2002).³ He is also a director of Amcoal which over sees the South African coal interests of the mining giant Anglo-American.

Andrew Michelmore, Director

From 2009 CEO of Minerals and Metals Group; former CEO & Managing Director of OZ Minerals. Both firms are leading Australian mining companies. Minerals & Metals Group is a subsidiary of Minmetals Resources Ltd, a Hong Kong based company with significant aluminium interests in China.

John P. O’Brien, Chairman of the Board

Chairman since January 2008. His background is in business management and restructuring.

Willy R. Strothotte, Director

Chairman of Glencore and of Xstrata (see below under Glencore).

Jack E. Thompson, Director

Also serves a director for a number of other mining companies including Anglo-American and Centerra Gold (largest Western-based gold producer in Central Asia), among others.

Though there are 4 other directors who appear to represent general institutional investors, it is clear from the above that the board is dominated by mining executives who share considerable common history. There is much more that is not obvious just from this board of directors. For example, Century and Noranda purchased from Kaiser Aluminium the bauxite mine at St. Anns, Jamaica and factory at Gramercy, Louisiana, though Noranda has since bought out Century. Noranda is a spin off from Xstrata who originally purchased it in 2006 when it took over the Falconbridge mining company.

Other links of note are:

Xstrata and Anglo-American Chile are joint owners of the Collahuasi copper mine, the world’s third biggest such mine and which in 2010 saw violent action against striking miners.⁴

Hudson Bay (of which Logan Kruger, now Century CEO, was CEO until 2002) is now the subject of a lawsuit over the murder of Mayan indigenous leader Adolfo Ich Chamán who spoke out over the company’s activities in Guatamala – he was hacked to death by security personnel in 2009.⁵ This took place while Century board member Peter Jones was CEO of the company.

Centerra Gold has acquired the Kumtor mine in Kyrgyzstan from the government there. Given that the deal saw little benefit to the people of that country, it has, as a result, played an important political role there.⁶ Jack Thompson, board member of Century and of Anglo-American sits on Centerra’s board also.

In 2006, indigenous tribes people stormed the Inco mine at Goro, New Caledonia due to environmental concerns.⁷ Inco’s CEO of the time was Peter Jones, while Logan Kruger oversaw operations at this mine from 2003-2005, and remains a director of its parent company P.T. Inco of Indonesia.

UC Rusal, the world’s single largest aluminium producer is controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska through his En+ Group which he chairs. En+ is the controlling interest in a large number of other extractive and power generation businesses, mostly based in Siberia.⁸

His co-chairman is the financier Nathaniel Rothschild who runs the mining investment company Vallar, has a $40m investment in Glencore and is on record as being keen to support a Glencore takeover of Xstrata.^9,10 Rothschild is also a personal friend of both Peter Mandelson, the former EU Trade Commissioner, and of George Osborne, current UK Chancellor.

Xstrata has large interests in Australia where it has been criticised for sharp business practices¹¹, run roughshod over indigenous people at the McArthur River site¹² and is subject of a campaign due to its environmental destruction at it Mangoola opencast mine.¹³

It is hard to single out any firm within the incestuous world of mining conglomerates as being better than the other. All have issues with relationships with indigenous people, suppression of union activity and environmental damage, however the ease at which these accounts can be found in the collective past and present of Century’s key people and directors is telling.

Glencore International AG

Marc Rich & Co

The origins of Glencore are in the trading firm controlled by commodities baron Marc Rich, a controversial figure over the last few decades. Rich built up a commodities trading empire by making deals with the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini to trade Iranian oil while a US embargo was in place. At the same time he was linking himself to Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

In 1983, he and his partner Pincus Green were accused of insider dealing, dodging tax and illegal dealings with Iran when that country was under US sanctions. As a result they both fled the United States and Rich was named among the top ten most wanted fugatives by the FBI until he was controversially pardoned by Bill Clinton on the latter’s last day in the White House. Interestingly, his representative in Washington for 15 years (1985-2000) was Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, the subsequently disgraced Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney.

Rich settled in Switzerland where he founded Marc Rich & Co, continuing his commodities dealing, specialising in oil, gas and metals. In 1993/4 he failed in an attempt to corner the world zinc market, which lead to the loss of control of his company, though he remains a comfortably well off billionaire.

At the same time part of the company was spun off to become the equally controversial Trafigura. This is another commodity broker who entered the news when it brought out a ‘super-injunction’ to stop reporting of its role in illegal dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire, though it has other scandals to its name as well.

Glencore

Marc Rich & Co was taken over by Rich’s inner circle and renamed Glencore. Many of its partners, of whom there are 485, will become very wealthy men following the listing of the shares. Day-to-day control remains principally with two of Rich’s former lieutenants, the highly seclusive and media-shy Ivan Glasenberg (current CEO) & Willy Strothotte (founding CEO and Chairman). Under these two, Glencore has continued to grow and dominate many of the markets it is involved in. It developed the tactic of investing in producers of raw materials, then striking deals that gave it exclusive access to their products which it would then trade on the market. The result is a global empire with its fingers in many pies, particularly metals, oil and grain. The ruthless and aggressive dealings methods developed under Marc Rich continued to shape the culture of the company, though it remains mired in considerable secrecy.

A large part of Glencore’s success is its willingness to do deals in places and with people were the more respectable sides of capitalism are wary to tread, doing deals in Congo and central Asia. It has also never been afraid to make deals that breached embargoes, including Saddam Hussein or South Africa during the apartheid era. Large-scale deals are being done in Central Asia with the numerous mining barons which emerged there after the collapse of the USSR, and who have strong links to corruption in those states. To this day many of its subsidiaries continue to be accused of human rights and environmental abuses.

The networks of control associated with Glencore are vast. In terms of its position in the world, it controls huge amounts of the addressable global market in copper (50%), zinc (60%), aluminium (38%), lead (45%), cobalt (23%), ferrochrome (16%), thermal coal (28%), wheat (10%), and one quarter of the worlds barley, sunflower and rape seed.^14,15 What this means is that it can effectively set prices for these commodities.

Addressable: the amount of a commodity accessible to a market. For example, many mines are owned by larger concerns who have acquired them entirely for their own use rather than for trading the ore/products on the open market. Thus the percentages quoted are for the volume of the global market rather than the total amount if all production is taken into account.

Leading Business Interests¹⁶

Glencore has a vast number of interests around the globe. The following is a brief on some of its leading assets and their problems, and it is certainly not exclusive. Many of the other mines it has a controlling interest in are open cast, with all the attendant problems, such as habitat destruction and pollution of the environment.

Argentina

The AR Zinc Group, acquired in 2005 operates the Aguilar mine, the Palpala smelter and a sulphuric acid producer, Sulfacid S.A. in the heavily mined north-western state of Jujuy, Argentina. These operations are part of a group of mines and related industries that have caused significant environmental damage and health problems to the various indigenous peoples of the region – demonstrations and protests against the presence of the mining companies have been held, including AR Zinc.^{17, 18, 19}

Australia

Glencore have a 40% stake in Minara Resources (formerly Anaconda), which runs the Murrin Murrin mine. Willy Strothotte, Ivan Glasenberg and others connected with Glencore sit on Minara’s board.²⁰ Both Murrin Murrin and Mt Isa Mines, which is controlled by Xstrata, were cited in 2009 as among the worst polluters in Australia.²¹

Bolivia

Glencore owns the Sinchi Wayra mining company that operates five mines. There has been an ongoing dispute with workers over attempts to increase working hours and on pay. The workers have called on the government to nationalise the company.²² In the past it has been criticized for mass lay-offs as a cost cutting tactic.²³

Columbia

The El Cerrejon Norte mine, jointly owned with Anglo American & BHP Billiton has been described as “a continuing horror story of forced relocations of indigenous people, human rights violations, environmental destruction and other assorted injustices”, in particular against the Wayuu people. Union organisers have received death threats from paramilitaries.²⁴ Similar allegations are made in relation to its coal mine at La Jagua, which Glencore’s subsidiary Prodeco purchased from Xstrata.^25,26,27 Prodeco also operates an open cast coal mine at Calenturitas, La Loma.

Congo

Glencore acquired control in 2008 of the financially troubled Katanga Mining²⁸, one of Africa’s biggest copper and cobalt producers. It is situated in a highly troubled region where militias have funded their struggles by selling off resource rich land. There are reports of water contamination and poor working conditions at its mines.²⁹ Swiss NGOs have been highly critical of Katanga Mines, with Bread For All and The Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund publishing a report accusing Glencore of involvement with of human rights abuses, child labour, pollution and tax evasion in the region³⁰, which has lead to a campaign against the company. ³¹ Glencore also owns the new mine at Mutanda, also in Katanga province. Glencore’s minority partner in Katanga is the Israeli magnate Dan Getler who specialises in investments in the Congo and who has links to blood diamonds and to right-wing Israeli politicians, in particular Avigdor Lieberman.³²

Kazakhstan

Glencore has partnered with Kazakhstan private investment company Verny Capital to take control of the Kazzinc, which has extensive mining and smelting interests throughout that country. Currently 51% owned by Glencore, that stake is expected to rise to 93% following Glencore’s floatation. Verny is controlled by the controversial Utemuratov family, which is close to President Nazarbayev, who is also believed to have a stake.³³ Under Nazarbayev there has been large-scale transfer of the nation’s mineral wealth into private hands and Glencore has been integral to that process.

Peru

Glencore owns the Iscaycruz & Yauliyacu mines (Los Quenualos), which have been accused of unsafe working conditions and subsequent anti-union activities.³⁴

Philippines

Xstrata’s proposed Sagittarius mine at Tampakan, Mindanao threatens indigenous peoples and important rainforests. On 9th March, 2009 a leading opponent of the project, Eliezer “Boy” Billanes, was assassinated.³⁵ Mines in Philippines, such as this one, have also been linked with threats to food security, partly due to the particular nature of the ecology they work in.³⁶

Russia

UC Rusal³⁷, the Russian aluminium giant; controls the world’s largest deposits of bauxite (the ore from which aluminium is obtained) and is the second biggest producer of global alumina (aluminium refined from bauxite) with a 14% of global production. Controlled by oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the firm was created by a merger of Rusal with the smaller SUAL and Glencore aluminium interests. There remain strong links between Glencore and UC Rusal with Glencore owning 8.7% of UC Rusal, and a friendship between Deripaska and Glasenberg.³⁸

As well as UC Rusal, Glencore has numerous other business interests in mineral wealthy Russia. Some of these date back to when Glencore was swift to do deals to take control of Russian state assets following the collapse of the USSR. Though it has been edged out of some of these companies who prefer to sell direct to consumers in China, etc, it does have deals with Russian producers of coal, oil and grain, in part through EN+, Deripaska’s company. There are rumours that it is trying to exploit links into the zinc, nickel and lead producers. Other deals and their relations to Glencore remain murky³⁹, but another major partner is the independent oil refiner Russneft.⁴⁰

Zambia

Glencore has control of Mopani Mines, which has come under environmental scrutiny, being believed to be the source of acid rain due to sulphur dioxide emissions.⁴¹ In 2005, 20 miners died in different accidents at the mine, blamed in part on cut backs in training.⁴² A Daily Mail investigation has claimed that Glencore is engaged in exploitation tax evasion through sharp pricing techniques, so depriving the country of much needed revenue.⁴³

Zimbabwe

In 2011 Glencore signed an agreement with Mwana Africa to acquire nickel from the Trojan mine at Bindura in Zimbabwe – notable for its links with Morgan Tsvangirai. Mwana’s is a South African based miner with copper operations at Katanga in the Congo and gold mines in Ghana.

Other global interests

Glencore owns the PASAR copper smelter in the Philippines, the Sherwin Alumina smelter in Texas (cited for hazardous chemical releases^44,45) and the Portovesme lead and zinc smelter on Sardinia. It also owns 70% of the South African coal miner Shanduka. As owner of the Moreno sunflower oil company, one of the biggest in the world’s largest suppliers of sunflower oil, Glencore is heavily involved in the producing and selling of genetically modified products.⁴⁶ It controls 270,000 hectares of agricultural land and has various grain processing sites around the world which aid its interests in these markets.

In a recent article, originally published on news-website Pressan, Sigurbjörn says that before the municipal elections in spring 2009, the community in Hvalfjörður settled upon an agreement about environmental and industrial affairs. But under the administration of Hjálmar Sveinsson (on photo), who is a vice-councilman of Reykjavík for Samfylkingin, a joint venture of several port authorities in the Faxaflói area, titled the Associated Icelandic Ports, is enabling the way for the construction of yet another two factories at the Grundatangi industrial site in Hvalfjörður, where the two aforementioned factories are located. Sigurbjörn describes the whole process as a very dubious one:

Faxaflóahafnir [the Associated Icelandic Ports] requested that the industrial site at Grundartangi would be enlarged by 70,000 square-meters in order to place polluting industries there. The municipality, lead by the chairman of the parish council who is also a board member of Faxaflóahafnir, managed to put the change, which is now waiting a verdict from the Ministry of Interior, through by shady manners. Around 50 persons and parties made remarks on Faxaflóahafnir’s requested changes, but none of them were taken into consideration. But that wasn’t all: A detailed land-use plan was advertised beside the change of the general plan even before the deadline to make remarks on that particular change passed.

As the authorities have kept silent it is still not certain what companies are involved in those plans. In July this year newspaper Fréttatíminn reported that a Finnish company called Kemira – involved e.g. in paper and fertiliser production as well as biotechnology – which plans to operate a sodium chlorate plant in Iceland for bleach production, is looking at two potential locations: Bakki by Húsavík on the one hand, also a planned location for an Alcoa aluminium smelter; Grundartangi on the other. Such a construction does not require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) by default but needs to be notified to Iceland’s National Planning Agency, which then decides if an EIA is needed or not. The energy needed to run the plant, which is said to be 40 MW, would, according to Fréttatíminn, come from geothermal area Þeistareykir, given that the plant would eventually be built in Bakki. No particular energy source has been mentioned in the case of Grundartangi.

Sigurbjörn and other residents of Hvalfjörður, who have filed repeated complaints against the plans to enlarge Grundartangi’s industrial site, have mostly been met with silence. While this should not necessary be surprising in a state that has still not ratified the Aarhus Convention, the Hvalfjörður residents were astonished to find out that the above-mentioned Hjálmar Sveinsson – who, in his article, Sigurbjörn says “can be remembered as a creative radio personality who one could contentedly listen to, especially due to his own stance on environmental and planning issues” – is one of the project’s key figure. Sigurbjörn states that after weeks, months and years of Hjálmar’s radio talks on environmentalism and democracy, one would have considered it as likely that Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson would become a whale-hunter in Hvalfjörður as that Hjálmar Sveinsson would advocate for polluting industries and abuse of power. Paul Watson visited Iceland in 1986, along with Rod Coronado, where the two of them famously sank two of the country’s whaling ships and sabotaged a whale-processing factory in Hvalfjörður.

Neither Hjálmar nor any other authority figure responsible for these plans have openly responded to this criticism.
____________________________________________

See also:

Believes Aluminium Plant Is Poisoning Sheep

More Flouride in Animals Around Aluminium Factories than Elsewhere – Environmental Agency Refuses to Investigate

Elkem’s Icelandic Alloys Year Round “Human Errors”

A sheep farmer, noticing bone deformities in the skulls of some sheep, believes they may be connected to an environmental accident at an aluminium smelter in 2006, and is calling for an investigation.

Sigurbjörn Hjaltason, a sheep farmer from Kiðafell, told DV that he had noticed quite a number of sheep in his area having difficulty eating, with some dying of starvation as a result. On examining the skulls of the animals, he discovered unusually large swelling of the jaw bones.

This, he believes, is the result of pollution from an aluminium smelter at nearby Grundartangi. In 2006, an accident at the plant caused fluorine to be released into the environment.

Fluorine, which is also present in volcanic ash, when ingested by animals can cause freakish growths in the bones. Sheep that would eat grass that had been covered in volcanic ash would often times grow unnaturally large teeth that prevented them from being able to eat any food at all, resulting in starvation.

The conclusion of the Environmental Office at the time of the accident was the fluorine levels in the surrounding area had doubled.

Sigurbjörn has called for a full investigation, and wants an independent team of scientists to examine the teeth and bones of the sheep that have died.

See also:

More Flouride in Animals Around Aluminium Factories than Elsewhere – Environmental Agency Refuses to Investigate

Pollution from Smelters Damages Teeth in Sheep

In April 2009, Þorgrímsdóttir requested an official investigation into this sickness but when interviewed by RÚV, she had yet not had any answers, nor has the local municipality shown interest in the case. Þorgrímsdóttir is sure that the sickness can be traced to the heavy industry in Hvalfjörður, where in addition to Norðurál’s aluminium smelter there is an Elkem iron-blending factory just beside the smelter.

Only one day after the above-mentioned interview, Iceland’s Environmental Agency announced that they had no intention to research the reasons for the sickness in horses around the heavy-industry zone in Hvalfjörður. The agency argues that after reading through reports and other documents concerning pollution-inspection in Grundartangi, it is clear that fluoride pollution from Norðurál’s smelter has been within the allowed boundaries.

At the same time, measurements from 2010 show that the amount of fluoride in sheep in Hvalfjörður is considerably above guideline limits. According to the measurements’ results, the origin of fluoride is mostly from the aluminium smelter in Grundartangi, manifested in an increased amount of fluoride since production started in the smelter.

Shortly after the news about the fluoride and the horse-farmer, RÚV reported in their evening news that a silicon metal blending company has applied for land beside the smelter and iron blending factory in Grundartangi. The planned factory is to rival the Elkem iron blending factory in size.

See also:

Believes Aluminium Plant is Poisoning Sheep

More Industry in Hvalfjordur Brings More Abuse of Power

Pollution from Smelters Damages Teeth in Sheep

Elkem’s Icelandic Alloys Year Round “Human Errors”

“[Fluorine] accumulates in the bones of the animals and can at first be detected as brown spots or sores in the teeth. If the fluorine pollution is extensive, knots can form in the bones and make the animals limp,” Sigurdarson told 24 Stundir. “It is therefore important that farmers are aware of this and inspect the mouths of their animals regularly.”

Fluorine pollution from smelters is the most extensive when new aluminum pots begin operating. Pollution therefore causes the most damage when a new smelter is launching operations or after it has been enlarged. The fluorine is carried with the air to the soil and from there to herbivores.

The enlargement of the Nordurál – Century Aluminum smelter in Hvalfjördur 2006 to 2007 caused an increase in fluorine emissions from the factory.

Sigurbjörn Hjaltason, head of the district council of Kjósarhreppur, said he is very dissatisfied with the enlargement. He claims that the fluorine emissions from the smelter are higher than what is permitted and higher than what the website of Century Aluminum states.

“With good will you could say that it is within limits but it is still not acceptable,” Hjaltason said. “The factory is located here within a sensitive biosphere.”

On behalf of Keldur, samples are taken regularly from farms close to the Century Aluminum smelter in Hvalfjördur and the amount of fluorine is measured. According to Sigurdarson, an increase in fluorine can easily be detected.

“Fluorine in the bones of animals has been increasing, especially for the past year. It has not reached such a dangerous level yet that animals are becoming sick, but if this continues, teeth damages in sheep will become apparent,” Sigurdarson said.

The Icelandic media reports today that Icelandic Alloys (Elkem) “accidentally” released a huge cloud of pollution from their plant at Grundartangi in Hvalfjordur. Apparently the accident was due to human error. The media quote Thordur Magnusson, an Elkem spokesman, saying that this human error “…recurs several times a week.”

Sigurbjorn Hjaltason, Chairman of the local Kjosarhreppur parish, confirms that Elkem usually produce the emissions during nights, when suitable, throughout the year. This is so that people will be less likely to become aware of the pollution they have to breath.

Similar nocturnal habits of ALCAN – Rio Tinto and Century – Rusal have been reported for years by the people of Hafnarfjordur and Hvalfjordur.

ALCAN – Rio Tinto, Century and Elkem seem to share the same conveniently systematic “human errors.”

Are we perhaps to expect that soon the PR departments of these three companies will be offering the population of South-West Iceland free sleeping pills to help them through their dark nights of heavy industry?