Published: September 3, 2026
GBARNEY, Bong County – More than 1,300 people in this Jorquelleh District town, Bong County, are drawing drinking water from a single working hand pump, two years after residents banned themselves from the creek below the town, which they say the Hurien Mining Company poisoned.
By Rancy Clarke
Gbarney has three hand pumps. Two run dry regularly, and the one that works runs dry after a few people have drawn from it, residents said.
“There are about 365 houses in this town, and the people here are over 1,300. Even if the three hand pumps were properly working, they still could not serve the number of people in this town,” Town Chief Oldman Dulkly told the Liberian Investigator over the weekend.
The creek made up the difference until 2024. It runs through the mining company’s operational area, and Dulkly said it became contaminated that year, bringing skin disease and prolonged diarrhea to the town. He said several people, including children, fell ill and died after drinking from it before residents understood the water was unsafe. No health authority has examined those cases, and Dulkly acknowledged the claim has not been medically confirmed.
The community banned drinking from the creek. Residents now use it for bathing and washing to spare the hand pumps. Dulkly said he has told people to boil the water at length before bathing in it, and that skin rashes have continued anyway.
Zackel Kulpur, another resident, said chemicals used in the mining have reached underground water and left the creek dirty.
Hurien Mining Company human resources officer Lawrence Sumo said the company mines underground and that its operations can come into contact with underground water. He said neither he nor the residents can settle the question without a scientific examination of the water, and he urged the community to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to test it and identify the source.
“I can’t tell you it’s not the company before the EPA investigates and finds out it’s the company, and I can also tell you it’s the company until EPA can come and tell us the cause,” Sumo said.
He asked residents to stay peaceful and said the company intends to open talks with the community.
The company has been in regulatory trouble for most of this year. The Environmental Protection Agency shut it down in May over an expired environmental permit, improper management and storage of obsolete and hazardous chemicals, and failure to obtain the required chemical registration and importation license, violations the agency said breached Liberia’s guidelines on chemical importation, transportation, handling and storage. That followed a shutdown order in March from the Ministry of Mines and Energy, which cited a systemic failure to comply with mining law, and a suspension the same month by the House Committee on Lands, Mines and Energy, which found the company had exceeded its Class B license.
None of those findings establishes that the mining caused what happened to Gbarney’s creek. No agency has tested the water, and no health authority has linked the reported illnesses or deaths to it. What the regulatory record establishes is that the agency responsible for testing has twice found the company handling chemicals outside the law.
Residents want the national government to compel the company to fix the creek and the water shortage.
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