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On the last day of Ricardo Lozano in his position as head of the Ministry of the Environment, something unexpected happened: The National Environmental Licensing Authority -ANLA- filed the process of the environmental license requested by Minesa, for the exploitation of the rich gold mine in Santander. The resignation of the director of ANLA, Rodrigo Suárez, a respected professional with experience in environmental issues, on August 13, had set off alarms among citizen groups and the Santander authorities who oppose this project.
This decision constitutes a severe blow to the Arab mining company Minesa, which claimed to be ready to start the exploitation of the mine next year. ANLA is an independent entity but it is under the umbrella of the Ministry of the Environment, with which the decision taken by the Agency should have given reassurance to Minister Ricardo Lozano, of Santander origin, deeply rooted in his land. The filing of the procedure does not mean the denial of the license, but if the verification of what was presented by Mi did not meet the required conditions, a project that has the eyes of the country and the world above, mainly due to the location of the mine in the Páramo de Santurbán, rich in water sources that it is imperative to protect.
The decision issued by ANLA was based on technical arguments, which were the result of the evaluation of the Environmental Impact Study and the responses issued by the company to the requirements made by the Environmental Authority.
Bogotá, October 3, 2020. The National Environmental Licensing Authority (ANLA), through Order No. 09674 of October 2, 2020, ordered the filing of the administrative process for the evaluation of the environmental license presented by the Sociedad Minera de Santander SAS for the Underground Exploitation Project of Auroargentiferous Minerals Soto Norte, decision that is in the process of notification to the company and recognized third parties and against which an appeal for reconsideration proceeds.
It should be noted that, during the evaluation process of the Soto Norte mining project, the Environmental Authority requested additional information from Sociedad Minera de Santander SAS, which, once presented by the company, was analyzed by ANLA’s technical team .
The evaluation process had more than thirty professionals from different disciplines, experts in geology, hydrogeology, geotechnics, geochemistry, air quality, among others. It also had the support of five professionals from the Faculty of Mines of the National University, based in Medellín.
As a consequence of the analysis carried out on the Environmental Impact Study and on the information subsequently provided by the company, the ANLA technical team established that it was not possible to issue a decision on the merits of the mining project, so it had to be archived.
Among the main technical considerations for ordering the file by the Authority, is the definition of the area of influence, technical aspects of the tailings deposit (residues of mining activity), considerations on geotechnics, hydrology and hydrogeology, the risk management plan and economic valuation.
Finally, it is important to highlight that during this environmental procedure, 44,191 interveners have been recognized to date, a situation that has guaranteed citizen participation and access to information on the environmental licensing process to the communities surrounding the project, throughout the evaluation process.
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