Pascua-Lama gold mining project: development or destruction?

- Chile - Canadá:

29 de Mayo de 2013

Pascua-Lama gold mining project: development or destruction?

Known as Pascua on the Chilean side and Lama on the Argentinian, the Pascua-Lama mining project, run by the world s largest gold mining company, the Canadian-owned Barrick Gold Corporation, could come to an end following persistent environmental and social damage, malpractice and alleged property fraud.

- The company repeatedly changes its name in Chile and is currently operating under the label Minera Nevada Spa.

The project involves open cast mining operations set to decapitate a mountain, 4,500 metres above sea level, containing 18 million ounces of gold, 731 million ounces of silver and 662 million pounds of copper.

Based on the current price of an ounce of gold, it is calculated to contain the equivalent of 24.8 billion dollars in gold ore alone.

For Rodrigo Villablanca, an indigenous leader representing the Diaguita community, although the company has been fined, it will not repair the damage done.

“A two-thousand-litre spillage containing excrement from the chemical toilets poured into the river at a spot where people collect water and bathe. The stench was revolting,” said Villablanca.

“The river was polluted with acid mine drainage for ten months. The water supplies were contaminated with arsenic, lead and the mine workers’ excrement. The fish, birds, toads, crustaceans, etc., disappeared. Our trees are producing less. But they just pay the fines and keep pouring their filth into the river.”

Barrick Gold was fined 16.4 million dollars by Chile’s environmental regulator on 24 May 2013 for “serious environmental violations” at the Pascua-Lama project, such as “failing to build the systems required for the management of contaminated and uncontaminated water, which should have been installed prior to any excavation work”.

Matías Asún of Greenpeace Chile has described the fine as “derisory”, pointing out that the penalty report underlines the “irreparable environmental damage done to the marshland and ‘bofedal’ ecosystems, which represent unique ecosystems of high biological value, given that their unusual environmental conditions provide for the development of specific communities of flora and fauna”.

Lucio Cuenca, the director of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), has contested Barrick Gold’s arguments that the destruction of the high-mountain glaciers feeding the rivers of the Huasco Valley is a product of “climate change”.

Cuenca was emphatic: “There is irrefutable and substantial evidence of the destruction caused during the exploratory stage of the Pascua Lama project, prior to the year 2000, as well as the destruction it is continuing to cause during the building phase.”

As regards the devastation created at social level, more than 3,000 workers have been laid off following the order to halt the works at the site.

Joining them are the 400 workers recently laid off by the contractor firm Redpath, who were working on the bi-national tunnel for the Pascua-Lama project, which was planning to process the ore on the Argentinian side, despite three quarters of it being located on Chilean soil.

Breaching Chilean Mining Code, the project rests on the terms of a bilateral agreement, the Mining Integration Treaty, prepared in part by Barrick Gold and signed by presidents Eduardo Frei (Chile) and Carlos Menem (Argentina).

The treaty created a “virtual country” on the crest of the Andes mountain range, to exploit its mineral resources.

Mine ownership dispute

In the coming weeks, some 4000 members of the Diaguita community will move forward with legal proceedings to demand the return of lands in the Huasco Valley, precisely where the Pascua Lama mining project is based.

Álex Quevedo, the lawyer heading the legal team defending the communities, has explained that land titles were given in 1903 to the indigenous inhabitants of the Atacama, which were subsequently updated in the nineties. Indigenous people with these origins and title deeds are to reclaim the property rights to these lands, covering an area of around 390,000 hectares.

Barrick is also facing legal action headed by the Chilean-Canadian mining entrepreneur Jorge Lopehandía who, together with Mountainstar Gold Inc., is accusing Barrick Gold and Nevada Spa in Chile of illegally extracting gold minerals with concessions for the extraction of nitrate and mineral salts, as well as taking gold out of Chile.

This is breach of a provisional legal ban on the signing of deeds or contracts on minerals following a Supreme Court ruling, operating on the international financial markets with fraudulent property titles, and trying to obstruct the course of justice by bearing false witness, etc.

Both Lopehandía and Brent Johnson, his partner at Mountainstar Gold Inc., are concerned about the workings of the Chilean justice system, which has thus far submitted the case files without all the information required and has refused to try those responsible, the representatives of Barrick Gold, who are facing calls for jail sentences.

By Bruno Sommer Catalán

Fuente:
http://www.equaltimes.org/in-depth/chile-pascua-lama-gold-mining-project-development-or-destruction

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