Ecobreves – PERU: Millions Needed to Clean Up Mining Waste

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

LIMA, Mar 1 2004 (IPS) - Peru needs to spend some 200 million dollars to recuperate the environmental losses caused by mines that are now inactive or abandoned, according to government sources. The “environmental liabilities of mining” are the installation, run-off, and waste deposits of the mines, which continue to pose environmental dangers.

Since 1992, mining concessions include commitments from the mining companies to take measures that reduce and reverse the negative environmental impacts of their activities.

But there are more than 700 mining areas predating the 1992 regulation that have dangerous materials.

The Ministry of Energy and Mining will try to identify those responsible and require them to clean up the areas, said lawmaker Luis Flores, vice-president of the congressional Environment and Ecology Commission.

And the Peruvian government will have to gradually assume the costs of the older mines, where the concessionary companies no longer exist.