Richard Ness : Trial Log : Court Hearing #30 on 30 June 2006

Court Hearing #30 on 30 June 2006 - 30 Jun 2006
by Eric

Dr Safri Nugraha

I accept this expert witnesses testimony in it's entirety:

Of importance's, this witness testified that under the law, the 11 July 2000 document signed by Sonny Keraf is a permit, that the permit was not temporary, and that the permit was valid up until PT NMR's tailings discharge concluded in October 2004. Therefore PT NMR's tailings discharge was a legal action under the laws of Indonesia.

Of further interest, PT NMR was not required to obtain a permit until 2002 since the 1997 law provided a 5 year grace period for compliance, however, PT NMR did seek understanding of the legal requirements from the Minister of Environment , applied for and was issued a permit in the year 2000, three years prior to when it was legally required to do so.

Dr. Rudy Sayoga

I accept this expert witnesses testimony in it's entirety

This expert, along with other team members from reputable institutions testified that Buyat River conformed to water quality standards and was not contaminated by PT NMR operations. In fact, his teams measurements were almost identical to those reported by the Minister of Environment in October 2004 as well as the split samples taken by the police in July 2004 and analyzed by ALS Laboratories in Bogor. It was obvious however that these three independent samplings did not match those reported in the BAP by the police laboratories. In fact when comparing the three independent samplings results with the results contained in the BAP, a discrepancy of over 1,000% was discovered.

This same expert team also studied the shallow ground water in Buyat Village and found that arsenic in that water came from arsenopyrite found in the natural rocks they discovered and positively identified. This is a naturally occurring mineral completely unrelated to PT NMR's operation.