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Posted: 10 Mar 2007

Posted: 10 Mar 2007

Posted: 08 Mar 2007

Posted: 05 Mar 2007

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"An accidental spill of diesel fuel being transported to a gold mine in northern Peru sparked fears on Thursday of environmental contamination, the mayor of a town affected by the spill said.

The truck subcontracted by Exxon Mobil overturned on Tuesday en route to the Yanacocha mine, South America's biggest gold miner. Yanacocha denied responsibility."

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Chilean environmental authorities said they gave the green light to plans by Codelco, the world's No. 1 copper producer, to build a $1 billion copper smelter and refinery in northern Chile.

A regional office of the National Environmental Commission (Conama), a governmental body, approved Codelco's environmental impact study on the project in a meeting last week.

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Peru-Grupo Mexico-owned Southern Peru Copper Corp. (SPC.LM) (PCU.N) is behind schedule on its smelter modernization, part of a program to bring the company in compliance with Peru's environmental laws, Deputy Mining Minister Cesar Polo said this week.

Polo said that Southern, under a revised environmental improvement program (PAMA) approved by the ministry in early 2002, was due to have begun the modernization of its copper smelter in the southern port of Ilo last September.

But Southern, citing low international copper prices and other factors, had requested late last year that the project be completed in 2007 rather than 2004 as proposed, he said.

"The answer was no because the truth is it seems like we are being given a runaround," Polo told Reuters in an interview.

"We understand Southern's financial situation but the environmental situation of the country and Ilo must also be taken into account," he added.

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Taking a break from running his parents' restaurant, Javier Palacios strolls across the sleepy main square — the spot that will become a huge mining pit if a Canadian company gets its way.

Lime and mango orchards sprawl in the hazy lowlands below the town. Mr. Palacios, 33, an engineer, nods toward them: "We've been tied to agriculture for generations. We simply don't want the mine and the change that it would bring."

The farming community has been steadfast in fighting to keep the mineral treasure beneath its land where it is, and away from the mining company.

In the process, Tambogrande has become a case study in the conflicts that can arise from globalization, one in which powerful financial interests seeking profit collided with the will of a town determined to maintain its way of life.

Chile's state-owned Codelco, the world's top copper producer, obtained approval from environmental authorities for its $600 million Gaby project, a company spokesman said.

"Yes, the Gaby project was approved by Corema (Regional Environmental Commission)," Juan Carlos Diaz, spokesman for Codelco Norte, told Reuters.
The environmental impact study was submitted to the government agency for approval in June 2002.

Gaby, a copper oxides deposit located just south of Codelco's Chuquicamata mine in northern Chile, would produce 170,000 tonnes of copper cathodes per year starting in 2005, according to Codelco in a text published last June on the environmental agency's Web site.

"The project would initiate its production at the beginning of 2005 after a 19-month period of construction," Codelco said. "The initial investment is estimated to be $600 million and the project would have a life of 13 years," it added.

However, Codelco Executive President Juan Villarzu told reporters recently the company has not yet made a decision on when to begin construction of Gaby. He said the board would decide in May or June of this year.

The world's largest diversified miner, BHP-Billiton Plc (BLT.L) (BHP.AX), obtained environmental approval to begin production at its Spence copper project in Chile, said Chilean financial daily El Diario on Tuesday.

A company spokeswoman confirmed the information to Reuters and said environmental authorities would publish an official permit within the next few days.

Spence, located in northern Chile, is expected to produce 200,000 tonnes of copper cathodes annually. The project will cost about $800 million to develop.

Though the environmental impact study, submitted in April, requests to begin construction next year and start production in 2005, the Australia-based company's board has not approved the project nor that timetable yet, the spokeswoman said.

She said the board was waiting for results of feasibility, engineering and design studies currently being carried out and would also take market conditions into account before making a decision.

The mayor-elect of the northern Peruvian town of Tambogrande said
Wednesday residents remained opposed to a $405 million gold and copper
mine planned by Canada's Manhattan Minerals Corp. that some locals fear
will ruin a fertile farming valley. Manhattan presented its environmental
impact study to the Peruvian government on Monday and says it will hold
more than 10 public hearings on the controversial planned mine next year,
ahead of a hoped-for start of operations in late 2004.

The fears of farmers that a gold and copper mine would ruin their livelihoods in the northern Peruvian town of Tambogrande should fade - once they get more facts from an environmental impact study presented this week, the head of Canada's Manhattan Minerals Corp. (MAN.TO) said.

The planned $405 million mine, which has drawn stiff opposition from the area's farmers, will not rob the fertile mango-and lime-growing fields of water nor will it dump waste water on to farm land, said Larry Glaser, chairman and chief executive of Manhattan Minerals.

Instead, the mine will bring desperately needed jobs and investment to the region, he said.

Glaser told Reuters this week during a visit to Lima that the Tambogrande mine, to be located about 1,050 kilometers north of Lima in a valley that produces 40 percent of Peru's mangoes and limes, could be up and running by late 2004, provided the people back the plan.

In June, Tambogrande residents turned out in force for an informal vote on the project in which 99 percent of voters gave it the "thumbs down."

But 27 percent of eligible voters did not take part in the vote, which Manhattan Minerals denounced as flawed.

Under a harsh sun, elderly Honduran peasant farmer Guillermo Velasquez looks with dismay across his dry lands to an open-pit gold and silver mine run by a unit of Canada's Glamis Gold.

Velasquez, 80, owns around 12 acres (5 hectares) in the municipality of El Porvenir in central Honduras and has not left his lands since he was born. For decades, he has devoted his life to farming grain, vegetables and livestock.

Nearby in San Ignacio municipality, Minerales Entre Mares, a unit of Glamis Gold, has run the San Martin gold and silver mine since 1999.

Velasquez and others like him contend mining has devastated the forests and dried up water sources in their poor valley. Faced with the possibility mining could start in their areas, they are locked into conflict with their neighbors in San Ignacio, who largely support the existing project and the money it has brought.

"They are totally destroying our forest. I am ready to fight against that company. We want it to leave. We will give our lives for that if we have to," said Velasquez, pointing to a huge gash in the hillside under a cloud of dust where mining was under way.

See Also:

Glamis Gold unit hit by Honduras protest

A worker was killed during a mudslide in the open pit of the giant Antamina copper-zinc mine in Peru, Noranda Inc. said last week, but production of concentrates was not affected.

The Canadian base metals and mining company, which has a 33.75 percent stake in the mine, said operations were re-established within 24 hours of the incident on Nov. 6.

The mine, in Peru's central Andes at an altitude of 4,800 metres (16,000 feet), is expected to produce 330,000 tonnes of copper concentrate and 380,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate in 2002.

In Peru, the mine's operators said Santos Leonardo Tantarico, 46, was killed while operating a bulldozer in the area of the mudslide. Two other workers were slightly injured.

Several hundred residents of a Honduran town last week protested against an open-pit mine run by a unit of Canada's Glamis Gold Ltd. , saying it was damaging their environment.

"It must go! It must go!" some 700 protesters chanted outside the gates of the San Martin gold and silver mine that has operated in San Ignacio in central Honduras since 1999.

The protesters said Thursday's demonstration was the start of a movement they hoped would lead to the mine's closure. They said the open-pit mine was destroying their forests, and threatening local water supplies.

Jose Sierra, head of the government's Department of Mining Promotion, said, however, the mine was meeting all environmental requirements set out in the 10-year concession granted in 1999.

Chile's state copper company Codelco said this week it had concluded the basic engineering stage of a plan to convert the Caletones smelter to natural gas from diesel at its El Teniente mine.

The smelter is on schedule to partially begin operations with gas on June 1, 2003, and the whole plant should be running on that fuel by the end of 2004, El Teniente spokesperson Rodrigo Rivas told Reuters.

The project is part of El Teniente's environmental clean-up and cost-reduction plan. Natural gas will reduce sulfuric emissions at the smelter and also cut down on operating costs, Rivas said.

El Teniente produced 350,000 tonnes copper last year.
GasValpo, owned by the Australian Gas Light Co , signed a contract with El Teniente last December to supply the gas for 15 years.

The gas comes from Argentina's Neuquen province and is transported via pipeline to central Chile by GasAndes.

A website has been launched that features resources for communities to respond to transnational mining companies http://andes.miningwatch.org.

After a week of marching from villages across Peru, some 1,000 peasants arrived in Lima this week to demand government action against what they say is the contamination or seizure of land by big mining companies.

"We're not against mining development but we want local communities to be ... consulted," said Miguel Palacin, head of a pressure group for 1,135 communities affected by mining.

"The government is not interested in solving our problems caused by mining companies that contaminate land, rivers and undermine our health," he told Reuters.

See a related article:

Peru peasants in Lima mining protest

Consuelo Chuquitucto stares blankly at the courtyard of her home where donkeys bray and plastic sheeting is strung up as walls — but sees nothing.

Blind since a mercury spill in this hamlet in Peru's northern Andes two years ago, the 20-year-old's future is as dark as the world that now engulfs her.

Unable even to care for her three-year-old daughter Tania, Chuquitucto blames her blindness on the June 2000 spill from one of the world's top gold mines, Yanacocha, an environmental disaster that has prompted villagers to file a lawsuit in Colorado against Denver-based Newmont Minerals.

"I just want help for my baby," the sober-faced Chuquitucto says softly, her hands resting limp on her knees. She says she has not received a cent from Yanacocha, owned by Newmont, Peru's Buenaventura, and the World Bank.

A group of almost 1,000 people and municipal authorities of Cajamarca, near Yanacocha, have filed lawsuits against Newmont in Colorado. But Yanacocha is asking for the cases to be dismissed, arguing that since the case occurred in Peru it should be tried here under Peruvian law.

Peru's Cerro Quillish, to most people, is just another barren wind-swept peak in the high Andes, overlooking the sleepy colonial city of Cajamarca.But the grassy summit has not only caught the eye of Latin America's top gold miner, Yanacocha, as a possible jackpot, it has stirred a bitter feud over how large foreign mining interests stand up to the protests of local residents.

Cajamarca, where some residents fear that mining Quillish will sully their water supply and threaten public health, is fighting Yanacocha in court to keep the site hands-off for mining.

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Representatives from 27 Indian tribes asked congressional leaders to reject a law that would give mining companies prospecting rights on their lands. Chief Raoni of the Caiapo tribe threatened the mining companies. "Any miner who enters our lands will die," Raoni said.

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Even today, the risks are high and the rewards low for the thousands of
miners who toil here. But the difference is that miners now blame the
harsh conditions in which they live on the Bolivian government and its
embrace of the free-market reforms that, with U.S. encouragement, have
swept across much of South America.

The government of Costa Rica has created a new national park, lowered the boom on illegal logging operations, and placed a moratorium on new open pit gold mines.
President Abel Pacheco signed the measures as part of World Environment Day celebrations June 5.

Energy and Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Echandi said Costa Ricans are not interested in opening their country for mineral exploitation at the cost of the environment.

Gold mining uses cyanide to leach gold from ore, and critics fear the cyanide will be released into Costa Rican waterways.

The executive decree cancels three mining contracts already in place. President Pacheco said, "If the price for protecting the environment" is paying damages, Costa Rica will do so. "We have many reasons for rescinding these contracts, and if they sue us for compensation it will be cheaper than paying for the loss of the country and its environment."

Peru's prime minister on the weekend urged that plans to develop a controversial $315 million gold and copper mine plan go forward, saying this mineral-rich nation could not let the northern farming valley where the mine would be dug languish in poverty.

"We can't condemn the (Tambogrande) community to backwardness and poverty.... We need to work to ... make this project happen in a way that respects people's concerns and brings prosperity to the community and to the country," Prime Minister Roberto Danino told CPN radio.

Canadian miner Manhattan Minerals Corp this week brushed aside fierce criticism of its proposed Tambogrande gold and copper mine, calling the $315 million project a lucrative opportunity that farmers in a poor northern valley could not afford to pass up.

"This project can work hand-in-hand with farming and is a great opportunity to develop a poor area of Peru," Roberto Obradovich, head of Manhattan's local unit, told a news conference on the planned mine in the Tambogrande valley.

"The state has a responsibility to help us make that happen."

Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco signed a decree this week banning open pit mining in a move expected to hit the mining and exploration plans of at least two Canadian firms.

Pacheco said the decree was aimed at protecting Costa Rica's environmental wealth, which underpins a healthy tourism industry, and means all open pit exploration and mining projects awaiting government approval are halted.

Los Pelambres copper mine in Chile, controlled by the London-listed Antofagasta Plc , said yesterday it will suspend operations fully for three days due to storms, causing a production loss of 3,000 tonnes of copper.

In the worst storms to hit the South American nation in 100 years, a mudslide ruptured a 90-foot (30-meter) section of a pipeline at Los Pelambres that transports copper concentrates.

Meteorologists say the storms, which subsided this week, could be a precursor of El Nino weather that can trigger deadly droughts and floods around the world.

Hundreds of Peruvian villagers are reportedly seeking compensation from the world's biggest gold producer for injuries caused by a mercury spill at the giant Yanacocha mine. The complaint reportedly alleges the mercury spill led to disfigurement and physical disabilities among local people.

Residents in this northern farming district voted to overwhelmingly reject a Canadian company's plans to develop a rich mineral deposit that lies beneath the town.

Of the 19,996 people who voted Sunday, 98.6 percent cast a no vote when asked if they were in favor of mining in the Tambogrande district. Just 1.4 percent cast a yes vote, electoral committee officials said. Another 26.7 percent stayed away, a percentage slightly higher than the absentee rate in the last national elections.

The failure to vote in such elections, however, carries stiff fines while Sunday's ballot was voluntary.

The balloting, organized by the Tambogrande municipal government, was declared illegal by the central government, which said it would not have an impact on the project. "We hope the state will respect our vote," said Luis Panta Bereche, a grammar school teacher in the town. "If President [Alejandro] Toledo believes in democracy like he says he does, he should respect our opinion."

Japan's biggest copper producer, Nippon Mining and Metals Co Ltd , said yesterday it had reached an agreement with Chile's state-owned Codelco to set-up a firm, BioSigma S.A., to develop biotechnology for mining copper.

Nippon Mining said the firms believed that biotechnology was important for future sustainability and reducing costs in the mining industry.

Canadian miner Manhattan Minerals Corp. yesterday slammed as "suspicious" a weekend vote in which residents of the Tambogrande valley in northern Peru voted overwhelmingly to reject a planned $315 million gold and copper mine.

See also a related article below.

Some 36,000 Peruvians in the northern town of Tambogrande are set to vote yesterday in a local referendum on whether to keep the status quo in their quiet farming community or embrace big mining with a copper and gold mine which some fear could ruin their livelihood.

"While our vote can't force the government to do anything, they should hear us out and respect our decision to maintain our ... unpolluted farming lifestyle," the town's mayor, Alfredo Rengifo, told Reuters on Thursday.

Three weeks ago, more than seven tons of sodium cyanide were stolen from a truck in Mexico's Hidalgo province. The theft put U.S. border agents on alert in case the highly toxic chemical -- which is commonly used in the gold and silver mining industries -- became the missing ingredient in a terrorist plot.

The empirical evidence produced in this work, together with the one provided by other studies, leads to the conclusion that Chile's outstanding recent economic growth has not delivered the amount of economic income recorded by its NAS, since a significant part of it corresponded to depreciation of the country's natural capital. Environment and Development Economics 7: (2002): 215-239

Mining companies, long maligned for sullying the environment and making big profits in poor countries, have taken strides in becoming people-and nature-friendly but still have more to do, industry experts and executives say.

A truck carrying 10 tonnes of deadly cyanide when it was stolen last weekend was found abandoned in central Mexico yesterday, with part of its cargo missing, police said.

Three armed men stole the vehicle on Sunday, luring it off the highway by faking a mechanical breakdown in Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City. The truck was on its way to deliver the cyanide shipment to a mining company, local media reported.

The environmental and social costs of closing and rehabilitating old and abandoned mines around the world are likely in the trillions of dollars, and far beyond the capability of mining companies alone to deal with, Sir Robert Wilson, chairman of London-based metals giant Rio Tinto Plc said this week.

Wilson told Reuters at the Global Mining Initiative conference on sustainable development in Toronto that a recent estimate puts rehabilitation costs just in the United States, where regulation is stricter than in many other countries, at $35 billion. "If you look at where the real problems are, in Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, India, China, the extent of the (mine) legacy issues is enormous, and it's totally beyond the capability of this industry, either financially or technically, to make a meaningful contribution to that," Wilson said.

The three-day Global Mining Initiative conference in Toronto, that drew a host of Chief executives from the world's top mining companies, ended yesterday with pledges that the industry is in the process of mending its social and environmental ways, but with no concrete action plan on how this is to be performed.

The mining industry moved to put another nail in the coffin of its swashbuckling past on Monday, opening a major conference designed give it a kinder, gentler and greener face - even starting the event with an Ojibwa prayer to the new day, delivered by a member of the Mississauga Indian nation.

About 570 members of the world's mining elite, and some of their harshest critics, started the three-day Global Mining Initiative conference in Toronto that will try to shine up what the sector now willingly admits is a tarnished social and environmental reputation. The conference is being held ahead of the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August.

Mineracao Rio do Norte's (MRN), Brazil's largest bauxite miner, said that it was gradually restoring parts of the tropical rain forest in former mining areas in the remote Amazon region.

The company has reforested 1,500 hectares of the Porto Trombetas mine, some 500 miles (800 km) west of Belem, capital of Para state. Para has some of the world's largest bauxite reserves, with Trombetas providing some 10.3 million tonnes of the 13.2 million tonnes mined in Brazil in 2001.

Residents in and around the town of Tambogrande in northern Peru will vote in a referendum on June 2 on whether or not they would support the
construction of a gold mine that will require relocating one-quarter of
the town, or about 1,600 homes. Critics fear it could disrupt or even destroy the agricultural basis of the economy.

At its annual shareholder meeting today, Occidental Petroleum announced its plans to return to the Colombian government its controversial Siriri oil block (formally Samore), located on the traditional territory of the U'wa people. This follows a nearly decade-long peaceful campaign by the U'wa to halt the oil project.

The resources industry is an essential pillar of economic activity, but it can also be a source of social and environmental problems. Mining companies have sometimes been too slow in reacting to society's calls for improvements in corporate social responsibility. But compliance with the law is not enough. We must respond to demands for higher environmental and social standards, and greater transparency in accounting for performance. That is why Rio Tinto joined others in the industry in setting up the Global Mining Initiative (GMI).

See the article for the full text.

The Brazilian Aluminum Association (ABAL) said this week the country set a world record in voluntary recycling in 2001 by reusing 85 percent of the aluminum cans on the Brazilian market. Brazil recycled 119.5 million tonnes of aluminum in 2001, a 16 percent rise in volume from the 102.8 million recycled in 2000.

Beyond narrow roads winding through the mountains of Puerto Rico's Cordillera Central lies a tropical paradise lush with giant ferns, philodendrons and pockets of orchids.

Less than a decade ago, this nearly became an eyesore of mile-wide craters dug in a search for copper, silver and gold. But Alexis Massol, a 58-year-old civil engineer, led a community struggle against the government and the mining industry to stop the area becoming an open-pit mining zone.

Massol's 15-year effort to preserve the forests around his native Adjuntas is being honored Monday with a Goldman Environmental Prize – sometimes called the "Nobel of environmentalists" presented each year to eight people.

Industry, aid and indigenous people's groups last week gave qualified support for the World Bank's activities in Latin American oil, gas and minerals extraction. Emil Salim, a former Indonesian government minister, said that the World Bank had experienced considerable public pressure to withdraw oil, gas and mining funding due to concerns over sustainable development in these sectors.

This study examines why mining booms occur and why some people participate in them while others, living in comparable conditions, do not. The author argues that environmental awareness campaigns and stricter law enforcement are not likely to encourage more sustainable resource use in Suriname, and probably not in other parts of the Amazon rainforest. Rather, more effective conservation policy would be to promote people-centered development in rural regions through improved pubic education and health care, while stabilizing national economies.

Society and Natural Resources 15 (4 : 2002): 327-344, Marieke Heemskerk.

The state's largest mining business, the Drummond Company, has been accused of encouraging the assassination of three union leaders at its giant coal mine in Colombia. In a federal lawsuit filed here last week, a union in Colombia and the families of the dead leaders assert that Drummond's Colombian managers signaled paramilitary gunmen that they wanted the officials killed.

Unions from Colombia have filed suits against Drummond and a handful of other American companies doing business in that country, hoping to create legal and public pressure to stop the assassinations. In the last decade, more than 1,500 union officials have been killed in Colombia, where leftist guerrillas are battling the government and business.

"We have evidence that the paramilitaries who killed the three union leaders were in fact working for Drummond," said Terry Collingsworth, president of the International Labor Rights Fund, a Washington advocacy group that has worked with the United Steelworkers of America in suing Drummond.

For the full news article.

Local residents complain that not only have they not benefited from the mine, but their water has been polluted and their traditional way of life has been lost. New programs, however, have been introduced to create conservation programmes for the local flora and fauna, conduct new environmental impact surveys of the water and soil, and establish educational and health programmes for the local residents.

Canadian mining company Manhattan Minerals Corp. said on Wednesday it believes it will discover more gold in its giant Tambogrande project, where it already boasts major copper finds. Local residents have complained the project could ruin the region's key agriculture industry, which they say employs some 26,000 people and produces an average of $105 million a year.

Rescue teams in Colombia have recovered the bodies of 28 people killed after landslides engulfed a gold mine abandoned for safety reasons.

Another 32 people have been rescued alive and taken to local hospitals, but there is now little hope for another 40 missing miners.

Correspondents say the victims were poor people who were trying to scrape gold deposits from the mine near Filadelfia some 300 kilometres (160 miles) northwest of the capital Bogota, which had been officially closed due to poor safety conditions.

Read the full article.

Paramaribo, Suriname, November 16, 2001— Gold miners from a small village in Suriname's sparsely populated interior said they were forced from their mining pits by heavily armed police and soldiers who came to enforce mineral rights held by foreign companies Cambior Inc. and Golden Star Resources Ltd.

Reuters News Service - October 31st, 2001 - Edward Orozoco. Despite the country's rich reserves, many miners in Peru, which battles a poverty rate of 54 per cent, say they are hard-pressed to find enough gold to feed themselves and their families. Many tiny outposts have sprung up along the fringes of Peru's substantial mining industry as desperate, independent miners struggle to eke out a livelihood from the smaller, unclaimed veins.