‘It’s a barbarity’: why are hundreds of families asking to be moved away from this Dominican Republic goldmine?

In the shadow of El Llagal, a tailings dam that holds waste from one of the world's largest goldmines in the Dominican Republic, sits the home of Casilda Lima. The roof is corrugated iron and the walls are wood, painted pink and yellow. A sign reads "God bless this home".

Outside,the 114-metre-tall grey wall of the dam looms large. Behind it lies a lake of waste from the mining process, where machinery and chemicals, along with a huge volume of water, are used to grind up rock to extract gold and silver. Many substances found in tailings are lethal, others are radioactive.

In 2014, Lima, 47, says she was told she had high lead and heavy metal levels in her blood. She says she has developed heart problems, and lives with headaches, nausea and fevers. She alleges it is because of the pollution from the Pueblo Viejo goldmine and the dam.

Pueblo Viejo, about 60 miles north-west of the capital Santo Domingo, lies within Sánchez Ramirez, a farming province that faces significant challenges in terms of poverty. The mine has had a number of different owners but became a 60/40 joint venture between the Canada-based Barrick Gold, the operator, and Newmont, a US corporation, in 2006. Barrick's mining operations started in 2013.

"I never suffered from anything before Barrick came," says Lima. "Now I have a lot of headaches and kidney problems. I find it hard to breathe and get very dizzy."

Lima's house is in Las Lagunas. She lives with her five children and two nephews who also have health problems. "My 23-year-son doesn't stop getting headaches and feeling dizzy," she says.

Las Lagunas is one of six communities, collectively home to more than 450 families, in the area surrounding the Barrick-built tailings dam, whose representatives have alleged grave harms to health, livelihoods and environment due to mining operations.

Barrick plans to expand the Pueblo Viejo mine, and to build a new tailings dam three times the size of El Llagal less than a mile away.

A report by Steven H Emerman, who evaluates mining impacts, found that the environmental impact study Barrick presented to the Dominican government was "incomplete", did not properly explore safer alternatives and underestimated the consequences of failure.

In a letter to the Guardian, Juana Barceló, the president of Barrick Pueblo Viejo, countered that Emerman's report itself lacked supporting data and analysis, was not subject to peer review and is contradictory.

Both the existing and proposed dams have been rated as "extreme", meaning that more than 100 fatalities are expected in the event of dam failure.

"It's a barbarity," says Fernando Peña, the coordinator of the Espacio Nacional por la Transparencia en las Industrias Extractivas (Entre), a coalition of more than 100 organisations monitoring mining in the Dominican Republic, adding that Barrick's arguments do not justify installing the tailings dam.

Plans for the new dam and mine's expansion are forefront in the minds of the Comité Nuevo Renacer (New Rebirth Committee), representing the six affected communities. Its headquarters are painted with skulls and crossbones and phrases "Yes to life" and "Relocation now!". For years, they have been asking the government and Barrick to relocate people.

Leoncia Ramos, a spokesperson for the committee, sits down at a table to explain what has changed over the past 12 years: "There are many people who suffer respiratory problems, vision loss, skin lesions, heart problems and depression because of the situation. People are dying."

Community members have repeatedly highlighted possible water contamination. Barrick and the Dominican mining ministry say Pueblo Viejo is not responsible.

Before Barrick took over, another company had started mining on the property in 1975. In 1979, the Dominican government acquired the site. Operations ceased in 1999 leaving, Barceló claims, "significant historical environmental contamination". She said, "the legacy impacts, as well as those from other operating mines, persisted outside of the responsibility and liability of Barrick".

She adds that Barrick provided $75m (£59m) to clean up areas outside its boundary. All water is treated to meet regulatory standards before it is discharged, and the sole discharge point is the Margajita River. Tests are carried out daily to ensure compliance.

A ministry of mining spokesperson says analysis carried out by the government concluded there was no direct impact on people's health and livestock from current mining operations in the area.

However, some people say they've seen a decrease in cacao production. Others described how fruits they used to grow easily, such as mangoes, plantains and oranges, rot on the plant before they are ready, forcing people to buy food from the town market five miles away. "The Pueblo Viejo mine is one of the biggest in the world," says Ramos. "We could be living in wonder, and well. However, there are people here who only eat once a day, because they have nothing."

Barceló says Pueblo Viejo has invested $7m in community agribusiness projects and cacao plantations and that cocoa production in the area has generally increased since 2008.

In 2019, it was reported that the publication of a study by a Canadian university professor showing widespread dissatisfaction with the goldmine was stopped by the Dominican government after Barrick raised concerns about the results.

Gold is one of the main commodities produced in the Dominican Republic, and Pueblo Viejo is one of the world's largest goldmines. Barrick's total revenue in 2022 was just over $11bn (£8.7bn): the company returned $1.6bn to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. The Pueblo Viejo mine represented approximately 10% of Barrick's attributable gold production in 2022 and generated $776m of revenue, according to the company's annual report. The GDP of the Dominican Republic is $113bn.

Dominican law requires 25% annual income tax and a 5% contribution of net profits to municipalities where the mine is located from mining concessionaires.

A plan to relocate 450 families from the affected communities was drawn up, according to Peña and Ramos, but has not happened. Barceló and the ministry of mining say they are not aware of such a plan.

Barceló adds: "Since 2008, many people have moved into the area around the mine with the express intention to be resettled and to benefit financially." She claims many families seeking resettlement live upstream of Barrick's operations making it "impossible for the mine to have contributed to any contamination of waters, even setting aside the fact that we do not discharge into this catchment".

A letter sent to Barrick and government ministries in May last year, coordinated by Entre and signed by 16 Dominican and international organisations, claims "the harms alleged by community members may suggest a contravention of Barrick's international human rights commitments, its contractual obligations, and the company's own environmental, social, and governance standards".

Barceló rejects this, saying those at the company pride themselves "on being good corporate citizens and conscientious and responsible stewards of the environment".

Meanwhile, the six communities' situation is attracting wider attention. After visiting the area last year, Juan Dionicio Rodriguez Restituyo, the president of the human rights committee of the Dominican Chamber of Deputies, told parliamentarians in December that what he and his team saw "filled us with horror" and that "the only solution that these 450 families have is to be transferred to another place".

He added: "It is not possible that there is no authority in the Dominican Republic that can tell that company (Barrick), 'We are going to put it in the budget, find the formula so that these people can live and have a future.'"