New Adani info - Adani Australia boss responsible massive Zambian river pollution

Adani Australia chief executive since 2013, Jeyakumar Janakara, was director of operations in Zambia in charge of a huge copper mine. The mine contaminated a large amount of Zambia's waterways, with the company taken to court and found guilty.

Now, with this new information, questions are again being asked of so called environment minister Greg Hunt's latest approval of the Adani Reef wrecking mine in Queensland. Did Hunt have this information? If not how can the mine therefore be approved? Do we want this man Jeyakumar Janakara in charge of dredging the Great Barrier Reef to ship coal through it? Do we want him in charge of the biggest mine in Australia's history? 

A mine that even if it went ahead without any problems would in itself release 4 times as much carbon a year as the entire country of New Zealand.

*Video here ABC 7:30 Report*

Mr Janakaraj was director of operations of KMC when the company was charged in 2010 with causing a serious pollution spill, which saw a toxic brew of highly acidic, metal-laden discharge released into the Kafue River. 

The river is one of Zambia's largest waterways and a source of water and food for about 40 per cent of the country's people.

The 31-square-kilometre KCM open pit mine in Zambia's Chingola region is described as the biggest copper mine in Africa, producing about 2 million tonnes of ore a year. 

The 2009 annual report of KCM's parent company, London-listed mining conglomerate Vedanta Resources, said Mr Janakaraj was "responsible for overall operations of KCM". 

"On [Mr Janakaraj's] watch, significant pollution events happened," lawyer Ariane Wilkinson of Environmental Justice Australia said. 

"The court documents show that they discharged what's called a pregnant liquor solution into the Kafue River. That's a highly acidic, metal-laden pollutant, and that it changed the colour of the river." 

KCM was prosecuted by the Zambian Government, and the company pleaded guilty to charges of polluting the environment, discharging toxic matter into the aquatic environment, wilfully failing to report an incident of pollution, and the failure to comply with the requirements for discharge of effluent. 

The court was told the source of the contamination was the mine's tailings leach plant, with the pollution changing the colour of the Kafue River to "deep blue". The company was fined 21,970,000 Zambian kwacha (about $4,030). 

A few months later, in 2011, a Zambian newspaper reported the company's copper mine had again polluted the river, and that environmental authorities were investigating. ABC