ENVIRONMENT-ARGENTINA: People in Mt. Resort Town Protest Gold Mine

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 27 2003 (IPS) - Residents of the southern Argentine ski resort town of Esquel are on the warpath against a Canadian company’s plans for an open-pit gold mine, complaining that the use of explosives and cyanide will pollute the area and hurt tourism, the lifeblood of the local community.

The firm Meridian Gold has been given the green light by the authorities and has already begun work in a deposit near Esquel, a popular mountain and ski resort tourist destination in the province of Chubut, located some 2,300 kms south of Buenos Aires.

But residents have denounced the firm for beginning work before the results of the environmental impact assessment have even come in.

People in Esquel began to hold protest marches last year, and collected 7,000 signatures demanding a non-binding plebiscite to decide whether the open-pit mining project should go ahead.

Despite their continued protests, the residents only managed to extract a promise from provincial officials for a public hearing in late March 2003, to discuss the environmental and economic impact of an open-pit gold mine on ”Hill 21”, just five kms outside of Esquel.

But the governments of Chubut and Esquel, legislators, and local businesses defend the project, which is to generate 100 million dollars in annual profits and leave two percent in royalties for the municipal and provincial coffers, besides creating 300 new jobs.

Located in a stunning natural setting of forested mountains and lakes, Esquel depends heavily on summer and winter tourism, offering hiking, riding, excellent trout-fishing and skiing. Just five kms from the city of 30,000 is the La Hoya international ski resort, and 15 kms away is the Los Alerces National Park.

"The main fear is that the water will be contaminated," although there are other reasons that the residents are protesting, Pablo Quintana, a local activist who has taken part in the street demonstrations, told IPS.

A study carried out by experts in hydro-geology at the request of Esquel’s Water and Electricity Cooperative said the water needed by the mining project could trigger shortages in the city, not to mention the pollution of the underground aquifers that will be caused by the heavy use of toxic chemicals.

Meridian Gold will use the technique of leaching to extract the gold, and residents warn against this highly polluting process which employs cyanide as a dissolvent to separate the gold from the ground rock that will be loosened through explosions.

Quintana said people in Esquel are also complaining about the noise pollution that will result from explosions in the nearby mountains once the project, which is to continue for at least 10 years, gets fully under way.

The Canadian firm plans to dynamite more than 40,000 tonnes of rock daily, ten percent of which will be crushed using six tons a day of cyanide dissolved in water.

Public concern against the use of this technique increased after Esquel residents obtained from Chubut’s Bureau of Mines a map identifying more than 150 potential sites in the province for the extraction of metals in open-pit mines, most of them in or near the Andes mountains.

The practice of leaching is "highly unsustainable", and "leaves an eternal legacy of contamination and environmental risk," Greenpeace activist Verónica Odriozola, who has studied the mining project and joined the protests, commented to IPS.

Odriozola said Meridian Gold has already felled several hectares of forest of ”lenga” – a native tree species – in the mountains to make way for the construction of roads, the installation of test laboratories and the start of drilling operations, with the complete backing of municipal and provincial authorities.

The mining project, according to Esquel Mayor Rafael Williams, is "the cheapest and most profitable in the world," because it will generate jobs for some 300 workers for a period of more than 10 years, and will bring enormous profits to the company, a proportion of which are to go to the municipal and provincial governments.

Meridian Gold plans to extract yearly some 8.5 tons of gold and generate 100 million dollars in annual profits, at a time when gold is increasingly popular around the world as a ”store of value”.

But Odriozola argues that gold is a non-renewable resource, and that its use does not even have the justification that drilling for oil, a source of energy, might claim.

"Gold is primarily meant to be used as jewellery. Does it make sense then to run risks in vulnerable areas and use dangerous chemicals to extract this metal?" she asked.