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The emblematic Pascua Lama project, linked to the Canadian Barrick, traveled a long road, which today ended up being settled.
After analyzing an extensive file, the First Environmental Court decided the total and definitive closure of the initiative and maintained the fine of more than $ 7 billion imposed by the Superintendency of the Environment (SMA).
The presiding minister of the First Environmental Court, Mauricio Oviedo, explained that the ruling reaffirms that Pascua Lama did not fully comply with its Environmental Qualification Resolution, RCA, which led the SMA to apply various sanctions to the mining company for infractions classified as serious and very serious.
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“The Superintendency acted within the scope of legality, correctly weighing the elements of proportionality when opting for sanction of definitive closure and not for a partial or temporary closure limited since the magnitude of the danger of damage to people’s health makes it necessary to close the Pascua Lama mining project, as other alternatives of safe operation for the environment and the health of the population do not seem viable, ”said the minister-president.
In total, there were five closure charges filed by the SMA in 2018, of which the sentence includes three of them, those that are related to environmental breaches regarding the monitoring of glaciers and glaciers; monitoring and discharge of contact waters to the Estrecho river; and the use of a methodology for calculating unauthorized water quality alert levels, which uses more permissive levels than those contemplated in the environmental qualification.
Minister Oviedo delved into the more complex situations contemplated in the sentence and said that “the contamination of the waters of the Estrecho River constitutes one of the environmental effects evaluated in greater depth, taking into account the magnitude of the effects on people’s health.”
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The foregoing, because the ruling establishes that it is an uncontroversial fact that during the months of January to March 2013 the company discharged directly into the Estrecho River, water collected by the contact water management system, which produced a deterioration in the quality of the river and thus put the health of the population at risk due to exposure to manganese.
For this reason, Oviedo explained, for the Court there is no violation of the principle of proportionality in the determination of sanctions – as stated by the mining company – due to the magnitude of the danger of damage to people’s health.
For the Minister President, “the company failed to implement a set of measures, both infrastructure and organizational, not being able to strictly comply with its environmental license and consequently failing to adequately protect the environment and people’s health” .
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