VZCZCXYZ0012
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHNM #0610/01 1141621
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 241621Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY NIAMEY
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3420
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE
RUEHLC/AMEMBASSY LIBREVILLE 1342
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0518

UNCLAS NIAMEY 000610 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE, SIPDIS 
 
LIBREVILLE FOR REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL HUB OFFICER; PARIS FOR AFRICA 
WATCHER 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PAGR ECON EMIN EINV SENV NG
SUBJECT: NIGER TRIP REPORTS (4) ARLIT: PORTRAIT OF A BOOM TOWN 
 
REF NIAMEY 167, NIAMEY 137, 06 NAIMEY 1055 
 
------------------------ 
SUMMARY: A Boom-town 
Pattern of Profit & Loss 
------------------------ 
 
¶1. (U) This is the forth in a series of trip report cables 
documenting life, leaders, and issues in several key towns and 
regions (reftels A, B, C), of central and northern Niger. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Arlit, in northern Niger, owes its existence and prosperity 
to uranium mining. As world prices rise and the industry enters an 
expansion phase, optimism reigns. The benefits to the town in terms 
of employment and public services are obvious. Everything from 
schooling to governance and healthcare are well above average in 
Arlit, thanks both to French producer Areva's corporate philanthropy 
and a dynamic local government. A rich town in a poor country, Arlit 
faces some of the challenges that accompany booms. A local NGO has 
raised concerns about the environmental impact of the mines on air 
and water quality. While the Government of Niger (GON) undertakes a 
study and Areva responds to the allegations with stronger 
accountability measures, Arlit's mayor and council seek solutions to 
problems posed by in-migration and the town's harsh desert 
environment. END SUMMARY 
 
--------------------------------------- 
Arlit Overview: Life in a Company Town. 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) Arlit is a company town. Created in 1969 by the erstwhile 
French public-sector nuclear concern COGEMA and the Government of 
Niger (GON), it is today home to 86,000 persons. The story of Arlit 
is the story of its mining companies. Today, the French nuclear 
power concern Areva is the majority (greater than sixty percent) 
shareholder in Niger's two national mining companies: the Societe 
des Mines de l'Air (SOMAIR), est. 1968, and the Compagnie Miniere de 
l'Akouta (COMINAK), est. 1975. The Government of Niger retains a 
roughly 30% stake in the concerns, with the remainder in the hands 
of Spanish (three percent) and Japanese (six percent) investors. 
Since acquiring control of both companies from COGEMA in 2000, Areva 
has merged their management and other shared functions, though it 
retains the names to distinguish between the open-pit surface mining 
of SOMAIR, which takes place on the edge of the city of Arlit, and 
the subterranean mining concerns of COMINAK, a few kilometers away 
near the village of Akokan. Together, the two companies employ 1,632 
persons and mine about 3,200 tones of uranium each year. 
 
¶4. (U) Workers of all ranks enjoy company housing. For most, that 
means concrete houses, with electricity, running water, and interior 
courtyards. Medical benefits and generous family and vacation 
allowances make the mines a good place to work for Nigeriens lucky 
enough to land a job there. Contacts noted that mining company 
employees tended to have large families in order to take advantage 
of benefits from the companies. They also noted that the days when 
Arlit was considered a cosmopolitan "little Paris," rife with 
expatriate engineers and executives, are over. The vast majority of 
employees, even at senior grade, are now Nigeriens. French staff 
seems to come on TDY for several months and then return to Europe. 
Yet, the city retains a supermarket, sports clubs, and other 
"quality of life" infrastructure. While future prospects for uranium 
mining in Niger are good (reftel D) Arlit is unlikely to see a 
return of 1970s style expatriate life--after years of contraction, 
the companies have learned how to live without it. 
 
---------------------------------- 
Decentralization: Paternalism Pays 
But so Does Dynamic Administration 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Arlit Mayor Bachir Sidi Abdoul Aziz has an office and city 
hall that would be the envy of any other commune. Arlit's beautiful 
Siege de Commune, like everything else in town, derives from the 
largesse of the uranium mining companies. Since the advent of 
decentralization, Areva has worked closely with the local 
authorities on education, health, and agriculture issues. Even 
though this cooperation sometimes takes time--Mayor Aziz noted that 
project proposals submitted to the mining company take between 6 and 
7 months to elicit a response--it is still appreciated. However, in 
Niger every solution poses a problem--by virtue of the perception 
that Arlit enjoys a "feast" of Areva funded projects, the city has 
always faced a "famine" of donor and NGO investment. Aziz was quick 
to point out that many needs are not covered by Areva, and, in the 
absence of other NGO or donor activities, such needs are not 
addressed at all. Aziz thanked the Embassy for the Trans-Sahara 
Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) funded decentralization and 
youth job projects, both of which will touch Arlit. 
¶6. (SBU) Decentralization seems to be proceeding well in Arlit. Aziz 
is a bright, articulate, young Tuareg who appears to be well 
respected by the community. He traveled to New York City last year 
as part of a National Human Rights Commission Delegation to the 
UN--suggesting he has some national as well as local credentials. 
His business card displays home and cell numbers as well as office 
contacts, suggesting a commitment to constituent service. The 
President of the Arlit Tribunal, Judge Abdourahamane Gayakoye, 
characterized Mayor Aziz as "young and visionary." The Judge noted 
that, within two months of its installation, Aziz's commune 
government had paid the electric bills and gotten the lights turned 
on in government buildings. 
 
¶7. (U) Arlit's mayor and council are working hard to better their 
commune, rather than relying unduly on the safety-net provided by 
Areva. The urban commune of Arlit has eighteen councilors, and two 
village chiefs (one each for Arlit and Akokan), who serve ex 
officio. The partisan balance of the council breaks down like this: 
seven PNDS (national opposition party); three MNSD; four CDS; and 
one councilor each from RDP, RSD, UDPS, (all national ruling 
coalition members); and, a local party called Talaka. Mayor Aziz is 
from the PNDS. As is often the case with local governments, everyone 
seems to get along just fine. The annual commune budget is 240 
million CFA, thirty-five million of which comes from GON revenue 
sharing. The local tax recovery rate is an encouragingly high 
seventy percent (verses a national average of thirty-some percent). 
 
Mayor Aziz attributed this to a special committee that conducted a 
comprehensive tax census that counted and assessed every possible 
small business tax source. 
 
¶8. (U) Health care in Arlit is first class. SOMAIR and COMINAK each 
run large, modern hospitals that serve citizens and workers equally. 
Contacts noted that Areva would soon merge the two hospitals into 
one larger entity at the Akokan site. Education too seems far better 
than average, due to Areva's assistance but also to the commune 
itself, which recently bought and installed 1,065 bench/table 
combinations in the schools. Mayor Aziz claims the highest school 
attendance rate in Niger. Also courtesy of Areva, Arlit has a small 
airport capable of handling nine or sixteen seat aircraft. Between 
five and six small, mostly company planes come each day. One can fly 
to Niamey for about $400.00 on a space available basis. 
 
¶9. (U) Not everything is easy in Arlit. A victim of its own success, 
the city faces a population growth rate of 5.8%, which complicates 
efforts to raise the standard of living. It has no paved streets. 
The annual average rainfall in "the dustiest city in Niger" as it 
was memorably described, is just ten millimeters. Yet, even that 
creates great sanitation and health problems. The city is flat and 
its soil rocky; thus, the rain neither drains away nor soaks into 
the ground. It remains in un-hygienic stagnant pools that contribute 
to malaria. 
 
¶10. (SBU) While the mayor and council members were concerned about 
sanitation, they also stressed the need for agricultural 
development. They claimed that 600 to 800 tons of wheat could be 
cultivated by gardening cooperatives, were funds available for well 
digging and irrigation activities. In a similar vein, the council is 
interested in developing a "green belt" around the city to arrest 
desertification and reduce the dust. All of these development 
aspirations may fall victim to Areva's enormous appetite for water. 
The mining companies consume 4.6 million cubic meters of water each 
year; the city, with its 86,000 inhabitants, consumes just 600,000 
cubic meters. 
 
--------------------------- 
The Environment: 
Sifting Truth from Fiction 
--------------------------- 
 
¶11. (SBU) Our discussion of water use issues segued into a broader 
discussion of pollution. For several years now some NGOs and civil 
society organizations, foreign and domestic, have claimed that 
Areva's mines are polluting the air, water, and land. Locals, they 
claim, are subject to higher than average levels of lung cancer, 
tuberculosis, skin diseases, and mortality. Yet, as of this writing, 
there is no scientific consensus on any of these points. NGOs argue 
that a comprehensive epidemiological and sanitary study should be 
conducted; Areva tends to rely on the results of various 
environmental impact studies that have been conducted over the 
years. Poloff raised this question with a variety of interlocutors. 
 
¶12. (SBU) Mayor Aziz, in remarks echoed by his council-members, 
stressed that primary responsibility for investigating such claims 
lay with the Ministries of Health and Mining. However, he was 
convinced that Areva had conducted credible studies proving that 
there is no undue water pollution. The NGOs, he claimed, "have shown 
no proof at all of their allegations." When Poloff asked Arlit 
Prefect Omarou Djatti, he noted that he wasn't convinced by the 
NGOs' claims, but added that: "I cannot say that all of the laws of 
the state are universally followed," with respect to environmental 
practice. For his part, Judge Gayakoye said that the jury was still 
out. The GON, he argued, has the duty to commission a "totally 
independent" and comprehensive study that would provide the answers. 
NOTE: The Secretary General of the Ministry of Mines and Energy 
subsequently reported that the Ministry of Health was working on 
just such a survey. END NOTE 
 
¶13. (U) Poloff met with Arlit's principal environmental 
NGO-Agrin'Man--Tamachek for "protection of the lamb"--and its 
Founder / President Almoustapha Alhacen. Created to "sensitize the 
population to the dangers of uranium and its savage exploitation by 
Areva," Agrin'Man pulls no punches. Ironically, Alhacen is, and for 
most of his career has been, a SOMAIR employee. While ill and on 
medical leave some years ago, he started reading about uranium 
mining and connected safety and environmental issues. Concerned that 
best-practices were not being followed, Alhacen created the NGO, 
(which he appears to staff virtually alone) and started issuing 
letters and press releases denouncing Areva. 
 
¶14. (U) Alhacen argued that Arlit needs a comprehensive 
epidemiological and sanitary study; ad hoc studies of environmental 
impact are not sufficient. In December of 2003, Agrin'Man asked two 
French NGOs to come and conduct a study. Their 2004 report and 
letters to Areva claimed that water radioactivity exceeded national 
and international norms by 10 to 110 percent. Nevertheless, Alhacen 
noted that the GON has not responded to this study or to his NGO's 
repeated letters and press releases in any way. Alhacen conceded 
that the GON does not have the means to study radiological 
pollution, but questioned why such capacity had not been developed 
in a country like Niger. Going beyond the study results, Alhacen 
cited three key types of contamination in Arlit: air, water, and 
materials. 
 
¶15. (U) Air pollution:  Alhacen alleged that SOMAIR's open-pit mines 
had left about forty-five million tons of radioactive dirt piled up 
around town. When uranium is removed from the soil, about eighty 
percent of the natural radioactivity remains in the waste dirt. When 
piled up loosely, and hit by the wind, this turns into a rather 
dangerous cloud that blows through Arlit or descends on occasion as 
acid rain. Alhacen argued that Areva should do a better job of 
burying this extra dirt, perhaps using some of it to fill in old 
mine shafts or holes and then capping them with concrete. 
 
¶16. (U) Water pollution: Alhacen alleged that Arlit's water table, 
which lies at about 300 meters, was also susceptible to chemical 
runoff from the mines. Apparently, when mining uranium, companies 
inject a chemical into the soil to separate uranium from the other 
matter surrounding it. These chemicals, over-time, continue to 
descend until they reach the water table. Alhacen argued that Areva 
should supply Arlit with water from another, more distant site that 
doesn't risk this contamination. 
 
¶17. (SBU) Materials pollution: Alhacen argued that Areva had not 
always done a good job of controlling materials used in the mines. 
When old metal, machines, etc. wore out, the companies would allow 
workers to salvage the stuff for scrap--meeting popular demand for 
free junk. Alhacen claimed that some employees' families had even 
made cooking pots from old radioactive aluminum. He further noted 
that the Societe Nationale de Transport Nigerien (SNTN) truck 
drivers who move the uranium ore south commonly allowed hitchhikers 
to ride on top of the loose ore-often for hundreds of miles. Such 
egregious examples--as much an outgrowth of local cultural practices 
as bad corporate oversight--seem to have been brought under control. 
 
¶18. (U) Responding to Agrin'Man's complaints, Areva now forbids 
employees to take old materials from the mining sites, and is 
stricter about disposing of such things. It now containerizes the 
ore before trucking it, and forbids SNTN drivers to take 
hitch-hikers. Nevertheless, Alhacen noted that some pilferage of 
dangerous items continues, and he showed Poloff recent pictures of 
hitch-hikers riding in the bins of SNTN tractor-trailers next to the 
containers of ore. 
 
¶19. (SBU) COMMENT: As the foregoing anecdotes indicate, Agrin'Man is 
not only up against easily documented and corrected slips in 
corporate practice, it is up against ingrained cultural practices 
that derive from poverty. Fostering concern about the environment is 
not an easy task when the dominant issue is economic survival. 
Alhacen seemed to concede as much when he admitted that most of the 
five to ten-thousand people who came out for Agrin'Man organized 
protests over environmental issues in May and November 2006 were 
actually mobilized by the concomitant themes: poverty and the cost 
of living. Alhacen admitted that pollution, sanitation, and the 
environment are not effective mobilizers. In order to get people out 
on those two occasions, he needed to alter the issue dimension to 
stress economic concerns. 
¶20. (SBU) It is hard to know how seriously to take Almoustapha 
Alhacen. A one-issue fanatic and a bit of a demagogue, he is, at the 
same time, quite obviously right on some instances of poor corporate 
practice. Areva, to its credit, continues to employ him. No one, he 
claims, has ever tried to interfere with his or his organization's 
freedom of speech. Partly because of his efforts a moderate 
consensus view seems to have taken root among intelligent observers 
in Arlit--that a comprehensive, independent, epidemiological, 
environmental, and sanitary study should be undertaken in order to 
finally sift fact from fiction in the Arlit mines. END COMMENT 
ALLEN