by Glenn Walker
“Barrick! Listen! Chile will not surrender!, No to Pascua
Lama!,” roared a crowd of protestors as they paraded through the
streets of Santiago, Chile. The crowd was addressing Canadian
mining giant Barrick Gold, in response to the company's proposed
bi-national “Pascua
Lama” open-pit mine on the border of Chile and Argentina.
In what has so far been the climax of a campaign that is quickly
gaining momentum, the protestors gathered on June 4th in both
Santiago, Chile's capital city, and in the northern city of
Vallenar, near the Pascua Lama site. Each protest drew an
estimated 2,000 people in a lively atmosphere of carnival and
traditional dance and ritual. The groups condemned Barrick
Gold’s plans as greedy, heavy-handed, and called the proposed
mine an environmental and social nightmare, shouting, “We are
not a North American colony!”
Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational already notorious for its
dealings in North America, Australia and Africa, plans to
extract an estimated 500,000 kilograms of gold (along with
silver, copper and mercury) from the site over a 20 year period.
Before doing so, however, the company will relocate significant
parts of the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza, three giant Andean
glaciers. Barrick hopes to transfer the three glaciers to an
area with similar surface characteristics and elevation by
merging the three into the larger Guanaco glacier.
The anticipated environmental impact, coupled with the removal
of a major source of water for surrounding communities, has
local Chileans up in arms. But Barrick Gold appears un-phased by
the opposition. After all, Pascua Lama is one of the largest
foreign investments in Chile in recent years, totaling US$1.5
billion.
As with many gold mines, the Pasuca Lama mine would employ
cyanide leaching for on-site processing of the ore. Cyanide is a
chemical compound which, even in very small quantities, is
extremely toxic to humans and other life forms. If leaked from a
mine site or spilt during transportation, it can quickly cause
massive toxicity problems for an entire ecosystem, while
mobilizing other persistent and toxic heavy metals, as well.
For this reason the people of the Huasco Valley – the area where
the headwaters of the mine site flow – are extremely anxious
about the risk of poisoning their water source, along with the
significant problem of large dust plumes released by mining
activity.
“The air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we
cultivate have more value than the gold coveted by
multinationals,” wrote the people of the Huasco valley and a
number of environmentalists recently in a letter to the Chilean
president that pleaded for a halt to the project.
Barrick's plans to “relocate” three glaciers – 816,000 cubic
meters of ice – by means of bulldozers and controlled blasting,
is seen by mine-opponents as symbolic of the company's utter
insensitivity to the environment. As headwaters for a water
basin in an arid region receiving very little rainfall, many
opponents are gravely concerned for the ice. They say the
mechanical action involved in moving the glaciers will
irreversibly melt much of it, jeopardising a delicate ecological
balance further downstream.
“A glacier isn’t just a chunk of ice you can pick up and move,”
says Lucio Cuenco, from Latin American Observatory of
Environmental Conflicts (OLCA). “It’s part of a water basin, and
if you move it, you’ll disrupt that ecosystem”.
The three glaciers also constitute a precious source of
environmental knowledge. Ice is a natural preservative and
glaciers this large undoubtedly carry information on the flora
and fauna of the area and the history of many thousands of years
of the South Andes.
There are also severe occupational health and safety issues with
the mine. According to Cesar Padilla, also of OLCA, several
deaths have already been reported as part of the initial
construction.
Nataneal Vivanco, an organic farmer from the Huasco Valley, also
voices deep worries about the safety of the mine workers.
“They say they are a “responsible” company but I don’t know to
what level because right now, although they haven’t even started
to work fully, there’s been 15 deaths,” Vivanco says.
Vivanco’s claim is echoed by activist groups campaigning against
the mine, who allege that at least 15 workers have been lost.
But details of exactly how the deaths occurred are unclear and
the municipal councillor who is said to have an official list of
the deaths was unavailable for comment.
Barrick Gold did not wish to comment on the issue to CorpWatch,
but has consistently denied the potential scale of their effect
on the Huasco Valley and its inhabitants. They maintain that the
project is good for the region in that it will generate
thousands of local jobs, that safety standards are high, and
that the environmental effects of the mine are negligible.
“The impact on water quantity is minimal, the impact of water is
none,” claimed Vince Borg, Barrick Gold’s vice president of
communications last month in a statement to the Dow Jones
Newswire.
“We're not surprised at all by a number of activists coming out
and offering their view and distorting some facts rather than
focusing on reality,” he added.
Despite the company's claims, the regional environmental
commission CONEMA, in a recent report, has expressed concern
that the company has shown little consideration for the
possibility of down-stream pollution and that there is
“inconsistency” in their related figures.
The CONEMA report has called for the glacial relocation plans to
be scrapped and for the mine to instead be downsized or
established underground so as to lessen potential environmental
impacts. Barrick Gold is still compiling a response.
In the meantime, in an effort to stymie the growing opposition
to the project, Barrick Gold has released a major TV ad campaign
championing “responsible mining.” The company has also offered
US$10 million to fund local educational and cultural community
projects.
The fund has been dismissed as an attempt to buy silence by
mine-opponents who claim the money offered is miniscule in
comparison to the profits that will be made and the damage that
will be done.
Indeed, as the world’s second biggest gold producer with 13
major mine operations worldwide, and another five in
development, Barrick Gold is certainly not short on cash. What’s
more, they are not required under Chilean law to pay taxes on
their takings and have so far avoided having to pay a bond as
insurance if something were to go terribly wrong.
These fierce accusations of corporate irresponsibility and greed
are certainly not the first the massive mining company has had
to handle. In the past they have been accused of burying alive
50 miners in Tanzania (through a company they now own), of
playing a heavy-handed role in attempting to silence opposition
through expensive libel cases, and of blatantly disregarding
community and environmental concerns all over, from the US, to
Latin America, Africa and Australia.
George W Bush Sr. also appears in the long list of grievances
about the company. From 1995 to 1999 he was the "Honorary
Chairman" of Barrick's "International Advisory Board," during
which time he was said to have forced laws favourable to the
company.
Barrick Gold expects to have full approval for their Pascua Lama
project by the end of the year. Meanwhile opposition continues
to swell.
Nataneal Vivanco says that on top of the safety problems and
potential contamination to water (which he worries could ruin
his chance at organic certification), Barrick's presence has
caused another kind of contamination.
“The conflict that we are having -- one against the other, those
in favor and those against the mine -- is a type of
contamination, a social contamination."
Original
source CorpWatch
www.corpwatch.com
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