On February 18, 2026, an excavator operator from Palopo in South Sulawesi was killed when a mining waste pile collapsed at PT QMB New Energy Materials in the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park. This was the second deadly landslide at the same facility in under a year. A previous collapse in March 2025 had killed three workers.
Indonesia now produces more than half of the world's nickel supply, a metal essential for electric vehicle batteries. A decade ago, the country had only a handful of nickel smelters. Today, it has dozens. The Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, the country's largest nickel processing complex, sits on Sulawesi's eastern coast and has reshaped the global battery supply chain.
However, this industrial boom has come at a cost. Communities near the smelters report rising respiratory illness from mining dust and coal-fired power plant emissions. Sulawesi's coastline shows sediment damage, coral reefs have been harmed, and heavy metals have been documented in local waters. In 2022, elevated hexavalent chromium was found in Kawasi village's drinking water.
The problem is the toxic tailings produced by the nickel extraction process. When stored unstably, these toxic waste piles can collapse, as happened in February. Now, Indonesia's government is reducing nickel ore production by 34% in 2026 to stabilize prices. Yet the smelters continue operating, and another industrial park is being built. Every electric vehicle using Indonesian-nickel batteries contains a fraction of this environmental and human cost.