Hans Nicholas Jong, Jakarta – A deadly landslide in an Indonesian industrial park has reignited concerns over poor safety and environmental standards in the country's booming nickel sector, a key supplier of battery metals for electric vehicles.
The incident occurred on March 22 in a storage facility for mining waste, or tailings, in the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP), a sprawling estate that covers 5,500 hectares (13,600 acres) and hosts some 50 companies on the island of Sulawesi.
The landslide buried four excavator operators under toxic mine waste. One worker survived, while two were found dead. The fourth worker remains missing and is feared dead.
The victims were employees of PT Morowali Investasi Konstruksi Indonesia (MIKI), the contractor managing tailings operations for nickel producers PT QMB New Energy Materials and PT Huayue Nickel Cobalt.
IMIP, which manages the industrial park, blamed the landslide happened after four hours of heavy rain.
However, activists allege that poor tailings management and structural weaknesses may have triggered the deadly collapse.
Both Huayue Nickel Cobalt and QMB New Energy Materials use a technology called high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) to process lower-grade nickel ore to extract battery-grade metal. The issue with this process is that it generates large volumes of waste, up to 100 tons of toxic tailings for every ton of nickel produced. Because they contain hazardous chemical compounds, these tailings need to be stored in tailings storage facility, essentially dams holding back the toxic sludge.
This type of tailings, a slurry-like waste with around 30% water content, is particularly vulnerable to collapse during rainfall, said Richard Labiro, director of the Tanah Merdeka Foundation, an NGO based in Central Sulawesi province where IMIP is located.
On March 16, the region was hit by flooding, suspected to be caused by the breach of a tailings dam belonging to Huayue Nickel Cobalt as the floodwater was mixed with mud containing heavy metals that flowed rapidly from the tailings pond into surrounding settlements.
Satellite imagery from Jan. 3 also showed a breach at Huayue Nickel Cobalt's tailings dam.
The area is reportedly located in a disaster-prone zone, known to be susceptible to landslides and earthquakes.
All these have raised suspicions over a potential dam failure causing the landslide, according to Abdul Haris, head of advocacy and public education at the NGO TuK Indonesia.
"We suspect that this dam failed, causing the landslide," he said in a press release.
Nickel traders in Southeast Asia and China are reportedly increasingly worried about the potential for repeated disruptions to nickel production from the industrial park as the use of HPAL grows.
Tailings dam failures are a recurring global hazard. Since 1915, 257 tailings dam failures have occurred, releasing a combined 250 million cubic meters of slurry, damaging up to 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of land, killing around 2,650 people, and affecting approximately 317,000 others, according to a 2024 study published in Nature.
Dam failures can occur due to earthquakes, overtopping, weak foundations, and liquefaction, among other mechanisms.
IMIP spokesman Dedy Kurniawan denied the allegations that the landslide was caused by the collapse of the tailings dam, attributing it to heavy rain instead.
"A week before the landslide, there was indeed a flood, but it occurred in a different location from this landslide," he said as quoted by local news.
While the March 16 flood and the March 22 landslide occurred in different locations, activists say both point to underlying failures in tailings management at IMIP.
Not the first time
Indonesia's rapid nickel boom over the past decade has been marred by a series of industrial accidents, the deadliest of which was a 2023 smelter explosion at IMIP that killed 21 workers and injured 38 others.
Between 2015 and June 2024, industrial accidents at IMIP alone claimed the lives of 40 workers, according to research by the NGO Trend Asia, which monitors the clean energy transition.
This string of incidents, including the recent landslide, indicate deep systemic flaws in the environmental management and implementation of occupational health and safety standards at IMIP, said Andi Ilham, chair of the SBIMI industrial labor union in Morowali district, where the industrial estate is located.
"This is not an isolated incident. It adds to a long list of workplace accidents in the nickel industry of Morowali over the past five years," he said. "These recurring tragedies expose a critical failure in OHS implementation and weak government oversight, including from relevant authorities."
Labor and environmental activists have called on IMIP and the government to launch an investigation into the incidents. Any such investigation must be carried out transparently and the findings shared openly with all stakeholders to ensure such incidents don't happen again, they say.
Indonesia is the world's top nickel producer, so how it country manages its tailings risks today will shape the future of clean energy and the workers in the industry, activists say.
"No profit justifies the loss of a single life," Andi said.