The Gold Link


Four workers - middle-age, wearing orange vests with white helmets over sun-darkened faces - return to the Pascua Lama mine camp at sunset. They've been setting up a platform high in the Andes so their employer Barrick Gold can access the $18 billion mineral bounty buried at 17,000 feet. These modern-day gold miners from small communities in Chile's arid, dusty Region III don't bring home gold; rather, they each pull fossils out of their pockets - shells and snails now hardened to stone. Before detonating explosives at the crest of the continent, these men dusted off shells that settled to the sea-bottom a million years ago.

Beginning in 2009, that part of the ocean floor that rose into a 17,000-foot mountain will become a scalped canyon, its substance moved by truck to adjacent valleys. Each day machines and chemicals, including cyanide, will sift through 44,000 tons of earth searching for, at most, five grams of gold per ton. That’s two blueberries worth, barely enough for one gold ring.

COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY


The Huasco Valley makes a green ribbon exposed to the sun like grapes drying to raisins. The green follows the water. The water flows from the red, purple, and gray Andes Mountains that rise in hazy layers east of Vallenar, the valley's main hub. At the southern end of the driest desert in the world, Chile’s Atacama, the year-round presence of water seems unnatural if not miraculous. From Vallenar's downtown to the last one-store, one-school community of Chollay, children spend most summer days jumping into river pools. Even a half-mile outside Vallenar's paved, sometimes-bustling streets, patches of green earth reveal carefully irrigated fields growing avocados, grapes, and mangos or alfalfa for livestock. The agricultural lifestyle continues in the valley as it branches deeper into the Andes, becoming more rural and remote with each town. The swimming hole frequency remains steady. We stop at one by the relatively large town of Chanchoquin Grande.

About a dozen people, from toddlers carried by young parents to a middle-age grandmother, watch us scramble down a loose roadside embankment to get to the rock-covered riverside. The sun down here seems to arrive at mid-sky about half an hour after dawn. Its intensity doesn’t fade for ten hours. At around 6:30pm it begins a rapid descent and by 7pm it has disappeared behind the three-thousand-foot slopes of crumbling rock that wall in the valley, no foothills required. COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY

As we approach the swimming hole, we race the 7pm shadow creeping toward us like the Kodak grim reaper. The locals are drying off but they happily jump back into the water when we brandish our cameras. Earlier in the afternoon they had walked about a half hour to this, their favorite poza.

The water pools to about five feet deep behind a hand-made jumble of rocks, wood, and chicken wire. The younger children show off for the camera with hand-stands, their skinny legs scissor-kicking the air, torsos submerged. Teenagers hang teenager style in the shade of a little black-tarp covered hut. Soon the shadow passes over the pool and goose bumps rise on brown skin with the increased breeze. Everyone wraps themselves in dry clothes or towels. I ask about the mine project and the younger kids answer with the enthusiasm of educating from recently acquired knowledge: it’s bad, it will contaminate our water, we won’t be able to swim here if Pascua Lama happens.


BARRICK = GOLD

Aside from minute medical and industrial purposes, no one needs gold; it's an accessory. 85% of the virgin gold produced today goes to gold jewelry, and a large chunk of that to supply the dowry of Indian women. But if there's a market, there's a way, and Barrick Gold has found the way.

Barrick Gold is the world's leading producer of virgin gold. The massive Canadian-based corporation mines throughout the world. They recently bought Placer Dome in Nevada, a strategic move that has pushed them to the front of the mining world where access to the world’s increasingly remote gold mines requires larger and larger companies. However, Barrick has also gained a powerful international name by enlisting influential world leaders. In the late 1990s George Bush Sr. joined former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as Barrick advisors. The addition coincided with a heated competition for extraction rights to what investors believed to be the most lucrative gold ore body in the world, Indonesia’s Busang claim. Busang was in fact a fraud, but Barrick showed an alarmingly aggressive political prowess.

Within the industry, Barrick has been recognized as exemplary corporate citizens; the tagline on their logo is “Responsible Mining.” Good public relations means fewer roadblocks in the approval process for new mines. New, bigger mines and efficient exploitation keep investor momentum going in the increasingly conglomerated gold exploration industry.

Barrick arrived in Chile with the purchase of the El Indio Mine in a valley south of the Huasco. It produced for a few years before Barrick shut it down using what they consider exemplary standards. The site now looks reclaimed – trees, grassy meadows, a creek returned to the surface. But locals claim it’s too early to tell, believing that Barrick just swept a clean surface of soil over the waste heaps and tailings piles. The local water authority group has not done a water test, claiming a lack of funds. In the meantime, Barrick had their sights on what could be one of the most productive ore bodies in the world, a series of belts that extend north from the upper headwaters of the Chollay and Turbio Rivers. The first project, Pascua Lama, includes a chunk of Chile (80% of proposed mine) and a sliver of Argentina (20%) with the heart of the pit located at the extreme elevation of over 15,000 feet.

Pascua Lama might have been another anonymous mine that only the government, the corporation, the local communities, and some mining watchdog groups knew about. Except for one word: "glacier." Part of Pascua Lama's gold loot lies under three "glaciers" - Toro 1, Toro 2, and Esperanza. According to Barrick's glaciology studies, they aren't really glaciers, rather icefields. And cold ice fields at that, meaning they don't play a large role in the water supply (.5%). But glaciologists insist that percentages carry little weight when considering the overall ecosystem in such an extreme and vulnerable high-elevation environment.

The original plan necessitated scraping into parts of those glaciers and moving them to another location where they would, according to Barrick, grow back to a natural state within the neighboring Guanaco Glacier.

Breaking apart a glacier is easy for a company that moves mountains. Replanting it on the nearest ice field and expecting it to grow back raises many questions. Townspeople present at the initial community meetings asked, "What happens if you find gold under the glaciers and you keep finding gold? Do you keep digging further into the ice?"

Suddenly, there was a battle. Pascua Lama and Barrick’s “Responsible Mining” tagline faced a rising mountain of criticism and scrutiny. The Chilean government ultimately drew the line, demanding that no glaciers be touched. But in the meantime, according to many local residents, including some who had worked at the mine, heavy equipment had already been manipulating the ice in an attempt to expedite melting.

Barrick needed some community friends. Time for the old standby: divide and conquer.


SERGIO, PRESIDENT HUASCOALTINO FARMER'S COOP, AVOCADO FARMER

“He’s one of the last houses out of town. Look for the Avocados for Sale sign.”

We keep driving the part-paved, part-gravel, all-dust road past vineyards and small, low houses baking in the afternoon sun. There’s the sign: Hay Paltas written on a paper plate and nailed to a wooden pole. A royal blue Ford Ranger truck sits behind a barbed-wire gate. No a Pascua Lama bumper stickers decorate both sides of the rear gate. Sergio is a central player in the fight to stop mining in the area, specifically the Pachuy project, a site Barrick is exploring in the mountains north of Pascua Lama. Pachuy sits on land owned by the Huascoaltino farming cooperative, of which Sergio is president.
It’s suddenly cooler as we walk through the opening and down the path shaded by avocado and mango trees. The path leaves us at the wide, covered deck of Sergio Campusano’s house. Sergio sits on the old couch at the far end. He’s well under six feet tall with a round face that seems too big for his stout frame. His amber skin and shiny, smooth black hair has a more rich hew than many Chileans further south. He’s Peruvian. In the background, his young son and daughter lie horizontally in the two-foot wide irrigation canal flowing with water. The girl has little green chunks clinging to her long, thick dark hair: avocado shampoo straight from the tree.

Sergio’s family isn’t primitive. He has the truck and inside a simple office (connected to two smaller bedrooms) he has two desktop computers. They aren’t iMacs but they get the job done. Sergio apparently has no idea who we are and looks at us skeptically. Plus, he’s a skeptical guy, an obvious defense mechanism when one lives in such a waffling environment; after years of division and backdoor politics it’s easy to wonder who’s pulling the strings.

After explaining our intentions, Sergio unfolds a large Barrick map of the high cordillera. Red, green, and blue Crayon streaks outline chunks of mountains like a toddler’s crime scene rendition. These indicate the four mining projects in exploration. Pascua Lama in green represents a big one to the south but three more blobs extend further north: Pachuy, Valeriano, and El Morro. We had no idea about these exploration zones. Not many people do. The chain emails are sent when a glacier relocation is mentioned not when dirt roads are cut and samples quietly taken for exploration purposes. Pascua Lama is just the first chapter and this is not a novella. The potential for gold exploitation in this spread of mountain-tops is epic. Pascua Lama alone could account for 25% of Barrick’s global profit: $1.51 billion in 2006.

The big picture concerns Sergio. He explains that most people in these towns know nothing about the Pascua Lama project much less believe in any of the benefits promised by Barrick. Sergio holds meetings with the small towns in the Huascoaltino Estancia because he wants to unite the members of the cooperative with the Diaguita group, a recently recognized indigenous culture. The distinction seems silly; both groups are part of the valley community, both rely on agriculture or livestock, and both drink the water. So why the divide? According to Sergio, it’s largely because the Diaguita have negotiated with Barrick, been bussed down to Santiago on a Barrick-chartered bus, and ultimately have signed off on the Pascua Lama project. The Huascoaltino have not. But the Huascoaltino own the land being explored for Pachuy. So Barrick can’t ignore them; they must negotiate.COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Sergio is stonewalling. He knows this frustrates a big company more than anything because the company needs to work quickly and they’re used to getting what they want. He also understands that Barrick relies on investor confidence; a farming cooperative obstacle with a multi-billion-dollar mine on the other side reduces that confidence. Barrick can’t understand Sergio. They might even hate him.


RON KETTLES, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, PASCUA LAMA

“Sergio doesn’t have an ounce of Diaguita in him. Neither does his wife,” Ron says.


Ron Kettles is a stout, serious man at the end of a long career developing mines. He’s not the slick executive type with Gucci shoes and three secretaries. Although the computer desktop displays his Miami-based motor yacht, Ron seems to prefer the front lines.

We meet him in the otherwise empty La Serena office at 9am Sunday morning. He’s been here two hours. After a few niceties, Ron fires off a lecture on ethics, misrepresentation of facts, and what it means to be fair-and-balanced. I imagine this must be what a Ted Haggert sexuality sermon feels like, but I listen.

For over an hour Ron walks us through Pascua Lama's plan according to a topographic map on his desk. The plan calls for five layers of protection in the waste pits and leaching pond. Surface water from the glaciers surrounding the pit will be redirected via canals to join the free-flowing Estrecho River below the mine site. A water treatment facility will treat the naturally acidic water and recycled mine water for reuse in the operations. This treatment process will, according to Ron, "stay in operation in perpetuity, if necessary," after the mine closes. That “perpetuity” would begin over 25 years from now, long after current Barrick officials have retired, moved on, or entered their own heavenly perpetuity. It’s easy to wonder who will be around to care in 25 years, much less to hold true to this promise of procrastination.

"If anything, there's probably a slight improvement to the water quality and quantity," Ron said.

As for waste material, Ron says the mine will move 44,000 tons/day. Waste rock will be placed in stockpiles with membrane linings to control leaching of dangerous material. Ron is especially proud of the tailings pond dam on the Argentina side of the mine where the cyanide treatment plant will live. Unlike similar dams, this one will be built of separate rock, not the tailings themselves. This, ideally, will act as yet another barrier to leaking. A nearby reclaimed water pond will be 1 km from the dam and all has been seismically tested to withstand catastrophic geologic events (a 6.8 earthquake struck in 2003).

Ron emphasizes this importance, "There will be no possibility of contaminated material getting past the dam. There will be zero environmental impact effect."

The cyanide will arrive in trucks via the San Felix valley road that leaves out of Alto del Carmen. Truck spills are a major concern with mines, especially since the mountainous road is extremely curvy (see http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/gold/spills.htm for a recent timeline of spills in world mines). It also passes directly above the north shore of the Santa Juana Reservoir. Ron says two convoys of 20 trucks will travel the road each day during operation. That's 40 trucks a day, every day, for twenty years. Barrick's emergency response plan involves GPS satellite surveillance, though a cyanide spill into a river or, worse, the reservoir, spreads far too rapidly to be controlled, especially considering the slow pace of the mountainous roads.

Ron's proud of his mine - it is far more advanced than any mine he or Barrick has done in the past, including the year-old Veladero mine 7 km south of Pascua Lama in Argentina.

So why such dramatic improvements with Pascua Lama; why has Barrick gone to such length on this one?

"The emotional opposition has motivated us," Ron said.

So the “wayward journalists,” protesting environmental groups, misbehaving bloggers, and farmer’s cooperative leaders that tie Ron and Barrick in public relations knots are the motivation for the advancements and safeguards at Pascua Lama that Ron now brags about. Funny cycle.

Sergio holds a prominent place on Ron’s list of adversaries. After explaining how the Diaguita “magically” became a recognized culture only recently when a new Chilean minister named them such (“she’s a Diaguita herself”), Ron boasts of the cultural awareness initiatives Barrick is supporting via traditional cooking and art classes. Sergio, he explains, has no connection to the Diaguita people, rather he represents a farmer’s cooperative and his fight reflects personal financial interests. So Barrick Gold’s director believes this avocado farmer with a couple acres is wielding his mighty club of influence and manipulation in order to make a buck. How could he let money so cloud his judgment? Clearly, a buck for Barrick is more important than a buck for the locals. But that doesn’t even take into account the innate right and widespread expectation for someone to fight for his or her land. Ron recommends we speak to Anna Huanchequay, the Diaguita president with whom Barrick has dealt. Ron also suggests we find the Junta de Vigilancia, the not-so elected board of the Huasco Valley Water Users Association. Ron doesn’t mention Rodolfo Villar, perhaps because he’s another local with the nerve to fight for his land.


WATERED-DOWN DEMOCRACY

"The Water Users Cooperative, representing 2,000 farmers of the Huasco Valley, is fully supportive of the project. Chile is a democratic country and the media play an important role in the public discussion of the community concerns and interests. There has already been an extensive and open discussion of issues including the participation of farmers."
Excerpted from Barrick’s Website, www.barrick.com


Yes, the Junta represents the 2,000 farmers with water rights in the Huasco Valley. No, they do not fully support the project, according to Luis Mansilla Pereira, the Junta’s Director. We spoke with Luis in the Junta’s Vallenar office.
The Junta formed after the Pascua Lama project had long been in development. Once the mine was approved, the Junta agreed to work with Barrick on a water treatment study and to oversee the approval of the protection devices planned for the mine. Barrick also agreed to pay the Junta $60 million dollars over 20 years: $3 million a year deposited into the Junta bank account. The Junta signed off on the Barrick plans.


The Junta offers a unique take on democracy. The 2,000 Junta members share 12,000 acciones. Acciones represent the water rights for each farmer. One accion equals one hour of water usage. One accion costs roughly $2,000, though prices vary in different places. Acciones are limited to available water on each member’s land, but acciones can be bought and sold between members. Therefore, in a community dominated by a handful of prominent agricultural industrialists producing grapes and olives (further west toward the coast), the acciones tend to collect in the hands of the landed wealthy.

One accion also equals one vote and the Junta elects its own nine-person committee. The resulting board of directors for the Junta represents the most influential, powerful, accion-rich members. They speak for the remaining small farmers, many of whom have 1/2 to 1 accion for their family-sized, self-supporting avocado, grape, or mango farms.

Votes can literally be bought in this form of small-town democracy. Many locals wonder what $60 million can buy.


ANNA HUANCHEQUAY, PRESIDENT HUASCOALTO DIAGUITA CULTURE

Anna Huanchequay runs a newspaper and candy kiosk in Alto del Carmen. The blue metal box big enough for a six-pack of telephone booths opens its front window in the mornings and late afternoon each day. From inside, Anna looks down a quiet, paved street of Alto toward the horizontally layered ridge that separates her valley, the San Felix, from the Transito Valley. The two main rivers of this controversy meet just around the corner. Anna's position as liason between the Diaguita people and Barrick has not been such a smooth confluence.

We find Anna in her kiosk. Like Sergio, she’s apprehensive at first and seems worn down from trying to decipher people's motives. This Pascua Lama topic has obviously taken its toll on her. She stands in the corner of her low-ceilinged aluminum sided hut. Bright candy bars and posters of soccer players hang from every inch of wall or shelf. The wildly grinning cartoon faces on wrappers seem to mock the slightly stooped woman with sun-wrinkled skin as she moves forward to lean rest her curled hands on the kiosk counter.

Once convinced we aren't working with Barrick, she begins talking. Anna claims the Diaguita never supported the mine until after the government granted the permits; they felt, like the Junta, that once the mine was approved they better get involved as a watchdog. Anna and the Diaguita fought to keep the glaciers safe and Barrick ensrued them they would not and had not touched the glaciers. But Anna conveyed that a town representative had recently climbed up to the mine and reported that Barrick had manipulated the glaciers. Now Anna says they await a response to a formal letter sent to President Bachelet. Ultimately, they want further discussion on mine activity and their claim to land title.

This is what Anna told us. She also said Barrick offered her money and she refused. We have it on tape. But it’s talk. Someone else will have different talk in response. Moments later, Anna’s on her cell phone speaking to Carlos, a Barrick employee.

Anna looks tired. She brings to mind the shaky flag tied to the center of the tug-of-war rope.


CARLOS, A BARRICK TEAM MEMBER

In Alto del Carmen, the biggest town in the Transito and del Carmen Valleys, we meet Carlos. He greets us outside Barrick’s small office off Alto del Carmen’s calm plaza. In a Barrick golf shirt and khaki pants, Carlos looks tidy and wears a glowing sense of pride for his professional appearance and stature. He grew up and still lives 20km up the valley in San Felix. The full-time Barrick gig – cell phone, Bluetooth, red company pick-up, paid vacation – is as good as it gets. He’s nice. He smiles warmly and is genuinely interested in helping us; that’s part of his job as community relations – to answer questions and concerns.

Carlos speaks in length about the community programs Barrick has and will continue to offer in the area. He describes the cooking and pottery classes that teach local people traditional Diaguita customs. We ask him why no one we’d met had attended the classes and he says many of the people are shy or do not know about the classes. He discusses Barrick’s encouragement of local employment at the mine and the six scholarships for deserving college students.

When asked about the handouts of gifts, what locals call "Coima" for corruption, Carlos chuckles and describes an instance in which the company bought a specialized walker for a young boy with a muscular problem. Carlos smiles knowingly and asks us if that’s "coima."

He’s told that story before; it comes out like a familiar, well-rehearsed joke with a proven punchline. If a school requests a computer, Barrick will buy a computer and give it to the school once it verifies the request. These types of in-kind transactions, he continues, adhere to Barrick's strict policy of not giving cash. He must not mean the bigger deals like the $3 million deposited into the Junta de Vigilancia’s account each year.


PASCUA LAMA, THE TOUR

The two gates bordering the Pascua Lama are big, metal, and impenetrable. But they only block the road. Anyone can walk three feet to the side and around. There’s no guard, just the same dry, windy landscape of steep slopes narrowing to a fast stream the color of powdered milk in Windex. Miles uphill from the last communities, the shiny, sturdy gates with the bright Barrick: Responsible Mining logo look like billboards for a second. But then the eye broadens to the utterly empty context and curiosity takes over: What the hell is up there, 50 more kilometers on this windy road?COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY

The little twin-engine plane swoops between chunky rock pillars poking into the sky at 17,000 feet and the runway finally comes into view. The packed dirt runway, we’d been told, is on a former Diaguita field where games were played by villagers who once lived in the upper valleys. Over 30 of their cemeteries also exist on the Pascua Lama land.

I ask Franco, Barrick’s young anthropologist/archaeologist, about this.

“No,” he says, almost too quickly, as if he anticipated the question. “The Diaguita ‘field’ is a term used for a pasture where they kept their horses and livestock. It’s not where they played games.” COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Like Carlos with the corruption story, Franco has explained that one before.

Franco is accompanying us on this tour. He’s been with Barrick for two years. This is his second trip to the mine site, the first being in winter with five feet of snow covering the ground. When asked, Franco says his purpose on this 24-hour tour is “to get to know the site.” He’ll be with us the whole time.

After a quick check-up in the infirmary – flying from 3,000 to 15,000 feet in 25 minutes requires some monitoring – we eat a snack in the camp’s cafeteria. The building looks like the others in this makeshift base. Low, metal-sided buildings with gravel parking lots and metal stairs leading up to earthen terraces that hold the metal-sided dorms. The rooms are small but clean with a folded Barrick towel and washrag on each twin mattress and a bathroom shared between two rooms. Most rooms are empty with workers out on shifts. Only about 160 people work at Pascua Lama right now, mainly in the platform building and logistics arena.

In the afternoon we load into two trucks, two directors and I in one, Michael, Franco, and a driver in the other. We climb the wide dirt road that hugs the massive flanks of Andean mountain. We’re climbing to a saddle – the Chile-Argentina border. Pascua Lama is a revolutionary mine in many ways, one being its international nature. 80% of the open-pit mine will be in Chile, 20% in Argentina. This meant negotiating an unprecedented multi-national use agreement between the two countries. While Argentina operates its own controls, Chile delegated border patrol regulations to Barrick, essentially allowing free passage across the boundary. The majority of the ore will be accessed in Chile then sent via a tunneled conveyor belt to the Argentina treatment facility.

We stop at the 16,000 foot saddle. The mountain to our right hides the Pascua Lama ore body. It will be moved 44,000 daily tons at a time. To our left the hulking Guanaco Glacier crowns a mountain-top and drains into the future open-pit site and base-camp valley. In front of us, on the Argentina side, the treatment facility’s valley unfolds, flat and cleared for construction. Further east and south, mountain-sized clouds of gray dust circulate above the Veladero mine, a year-old Barrick project 7km southeast in Argentina.

I ask about the dust, a main concern since 15 tons/day can go air-born, silting the precious rivers and landing on glaciers, thus speeding their already-accelerated melting.COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Eduardo Silva, Barrick’s Communications Director, says, “It’s only dusty when the wind blows. That’s all.” Oddly, Michael, seated inside the car behind us, also notices the thousand-foot high cloud of dust blowing off Veladero. He asks the same question to his driver and Franco. They answer together, “It’s only dusty when the wind blows.” The players in this public relations theater might know their lines, but at 16,000 feet atop a continent I wonder when the wind doesn’t blow.

We drive by the glaciers - Toro 1 and 2 and Esperanza. Eduardo laughs at their size and explains again that they are barely glaciers at all and contribute less than 1% to the overall water supply of the valley below. He doesn’t mention that the slightest alterations at such high elevations as this can have dramatic effects on the overall ecosystem. Barrick officials sound exhausted to have to read from the glacier chapter’s script again.

As I hear it now for the fourth time the only difference is I’m looking at the glaciers in person. Esperanza’s top shines bright in the distance, a frozen layer over the mountain-side. Roads dead-end at an unnatural cross-section of the ice sheet and it seems that part of the mountain-side has been sheared off, including the glacier. I’ve seen plenty of glaciers and none have this dramatic edge to them without an underlying morphology to explain it. We snap photos, endure the wind, and climb back in the trucks.

The trucks return to camp, Franco the working anthropologist bobbing his head in altitude-induced sleep the whole way down.


CHEAP LAND AS NUISANCE

The machine is cranking up at Pascua Lama but a strange sense of stagnation exists. If the glaciers are safe, the infrastructure’s ready to roll, and workers are playing foosball at their lunch breaks, what’s the delay? Barrick casually mentions a few regional permits on the Chilean side. They don’t say a word about the Diaguita’s renewed interest in reclaiming their land title. Nor do they mention the lawsuit they just lost.

I had to ask Rod Jimenez, Barrick’s Director of Latin American Operations, about the recent court ruling in favor of a Chilean geologist and mine engineer. Rodolfo Villar filed suit against Barrick and won in November, 2006. In 1997 Barrick bought the land from Villar and, according to The New York Times, bought a smaller stake from Villar’s lawyer at the time. The lawyer received $650,000. Villar got $19 for his 8,600 hectacres.

Barrick is appealing the case. Despite the fact that Barrick’s only access road passes through Villar’s land, Jimenez asserts that the “nuisance suit” will have no effect on Pascua Lama’s development. When asked if the road passes through the land, Jimenez’s could not say yes or no, rather, “There will be no effect on the mine’s development.” Like Sergio, Villar apparently represents another pesky landowner out for his own financial gain.

We take the Barrick van down from Pascua Lama after our short, but rare visit. As expected, we don’t return with an expose of tortured workers and cyanide swimming pools. But while staring out the window at the natural pastures beside the Carmen River, alpacas dotting the green carpet, I’m awestruck first by the scale of a twenty-year, $18 billion dollar mountain-moving mine, then by a sense of doom: Pascua Lama could be multiplied three times if the future projects to the north gain momentum.

Back inside the van, Franco’s missing the view, his head still bobbing, full of corporate-anthropology dreams.


PAST VEGAS, WITH MIGUEL

Chollay is the last town in the Transito Valley. Fifteen kilometers from its small school and store the Barrick gate shines in dusty sunlight beside the Chollay River. Miguel Salazar lives in a small wooden house built next to his 80-year-old mother’s older stone house. A small orchard of avocado grows to the side, beyond the open-air kitchen where Adrianne cuts vegetables. Grapes drip from randomly placed canopies in the yard. We arrive late in the afternoon and Javier, Miguel’s twelve year-old son, greets us as we walk up the dirt driveway.

We leave our truck in the drive and cross the street with Javier to what has become our favorite swimming hole. The Pachuy River flows out of an oasis of overhanging branches and grass stalks. Above, the same bright, gray flanks of Andean dryness slant into the deep blue sky, but down here the 7pm shadow has swept over us, turning the pool behind the rock dam into a bowl of dark glass. We run across the flat dirt bank and push off the now-familiar jumping boulder, a flash of horizontal white that shatters the glassy water.


The Pachuy flows down from the Andes’ 15,000 foot crest 25km up the valley. A loose trail follows the river to the top, past a continuous string of vegas, the native grazing pastures of the valley livestock. Miguel has agreed to guide us on horseback so we can photograph the string of mountains housing the Pachuy gold Barrick wants to extract. The Huascoaltino group has title to this land and Sergio has no intention of letting it go. But Barrick has been exploring – their crude roads begin at about 11,000 feet, cut over the pass from nearby Pascua Lama. They know there is another lucrative gold pocket here, just a few kilometers north of Pascua Lama. The kids swimming in the Pachuy pool fear that its clean flow will soon be dirtied like the Chollay River that swallows the Pachuy in its milky blue just below the pool.

Miguel, Michael, and I stand around a small fire set into the makeshift stone encampment Miguel built up here for his frequent herding journeys. We rode for nine hours today to get to this elevation, a few thousand feet below the crest of the Andes but in an environment utterly different from the Chollay Valley. Up here, below the nearly lifeless zone at the crest, dense, spongy mounds of ground cover make an uneven carpet. Its green fluorescent glow among the dull red and brown rocks seems artificial, like an Epcot representation of an Andean vega.COPYRIGHT MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Miguel worked at Pascua Lama for a year. He helped map the landscape and was a certified explosives technician – he pulls out the old laminated card that says so. But he hasn’t worked there since, despite job offers. He doesn’t believe in what they are doing and he thinks it’s wrong to ruin the cordillera. And he doesn’t need the work; he’s putting his oldest son through university in La Serena and Javier is on track, too. This is Miguel’s backyard. He rides up this steep, dusty valley a few times a week. La Mula, the pack mule needs no direction. Miguel points to all the sources of water flowing from mountainside curves and gullies. He indicates the side valley that leads over a pass to the third Barrick project, Valeriano. The entire range will be covered with gold mines. Or uncovered.

We lean against the angular rock wall to eat rice and onions. The Andes rising around us turn black and look somehow more inviting than their stark daytime reality. Conversation slows with eating and the exhaustion that comes with elevation, a full-day of horsepacking, and struggling to understand Miguel’s difficult Spanish. Michael and I go to our tent. Miguel piles blankets and saddle pads between the two short walls that blend into the Andes, a one-man footprint on this high-elevation vega.

All of the farmers and cowboys we met share Miguel's perspective. They don't want the mine or its employment. Officials might argue they need it, but no one wants it. They have their own rustic lifestyle and it works with free, wild vegas and clean water flowing down the Pachuy, Cholly, del Carmen, and Transito Rivers. They don't need the controlled, vaccinated ranching life and consolidated agricultural economy that makes sense to big companies like Barrick. They need their children educated so they work hard to make that happen. One of the six scholarships Barrick offers to the 70,000 Huasco residents would help but so would winning the lottery.

The world wants gold. Barrick wants to supply it. Barrick’s directors and Website say they want to help communities. The farmers, teachers, clergy, and kids swimming in rivers want their valley left alone. It depends on who wants to listen.


COPYRIGHT ALL IMAGES MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY - ANY USE OF IMAGES WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION FROM MICHAEL HANSON PHOTOGRAPHY IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.

For information on sources of clean gold, ideally scrap and recycled gold, go to www.NoDirtyGold.org

Barrick advances

Confirming that its veto on the law of the glaciers was the veto of Barrick Gold, the President received a few days ago the boss of Canadian mining. M. Bonasso.

his veto to the law of the glaciers was the veto of Barrick Gold, the president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner received a few days ago to the Canadian mining boss, Peter Munk, a partner and protector of the arms dealer Adnan Kassoghi, known for his involvement in the scandal known as Iran-Contra who stood to cost him the presidency Ronald Reagan.

In the audience was present CEO of Barrick, Aaron Regent, who had visited the governor in February in San Juan, José Luis Gioja, so obvious to make the appointment with the first president to accelerate the binational mining project Pascua Lama, questioned in Chile and Argentina by the damaging effect it can have on the glaciers and periglacial areas of the Andes, which constitute the main drinking water supply in both countries.

The idea is that in May will conduct a meeting with the Chilean-Argentine presence of Michelle Bachelet and Cristina and begin operations in September of this giant gold mine opencast project Barrick largest in South America, which involve an investment of about three billion dollars.

At the meeting in question were the greatest promoters of the veto to the law of glaciers: Gioja governor and secretary of the National Mining, Jorge Mayoral. Both closely linked with the mining industry.

The appointment with the President bare the close link with the second mining world and reveals that the objections raised by the executive, explaining the veto, were quite rhetorical. The decree of veto would carry out a forum with the participation of governors and legislators of the Andean provinces "in order to achieve a greater consensus and act with greater respect for provincial autonomy. A curious argument that if the law in question was passed unanimously in both houses of Congress. In fact, there was only one session late last year and early this, but not any of these meetings came the bill.

Neither Senator Daniel Filmus, who presided until a few days ago the Senate Environmental Committee, reached consensus to draft a law promised better.

The discussions, however, exist. On March 30 last, in my capacity as chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources and Human Environment of the House of Representatives, convened jointly with the then-Ombudsman, Eduardo Mondino, a public hearing at which the world exposed persons representatives of various scientific and environmental organizations and neighborhood. He spoke, among others, Nobel Prize winner and co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change United Nations, Osvaldo Canziani, who defended the law vetoed, born of an initiative of the deputy mandate fulfilled Marta Maffei. An identical project, my responsibility, is currently pending. Is counterbalanced by another's Deputy Juan Carlos Gioja, brother of the governor and senator and businessman Cesar Ambrosio Gioja mining. Gioja MP seeks to remove the protection of the periglacial areas of strategic importance with regard to water resources.

Outside of Congress receive intensive discussions between those who believe that water is more important than gold and that subordinate their policy interests. In San Juan, where political power is completely subordinate to the transnational mining took place in these days the Forum for Protection of Andean Ecosystems and glaciers, that called the Union of Citizen Assemblies (UAC). In parallel, the government and the San Juan mining entrepreneurs conducted their own forito, to minimize the impact of the meeting organized by supporters of the environment.

In this area there were very suggestive arguments, like that of Ricardo Martinez, president of the San Juan Chamber of Mines, who came to say quote: "All are periglacial Andes and that is where everything gets complicated. Just as is the entire project activity is restricted to the Cordillera look and not touch us. If you leave the law as it is, forget to mining. "

At the public hearing held in Congress, insisted until enough that the law was not vetoed a bill antiminera but a law that protects the glaciers. If the enterprises do not destroy or pollute mine which is our greatest source of drinking water, are alien to the spirit of the rule. If there are no glaciers San Juan, why worry then? And if so, should we agree to predation for the benefit of a big transnational?

The visit of Mr. Munk to clarify the issue. Starting with the curriculum of the visitor and his claim, outlined in the meeting, obtain a tax advantage to supplement the privileges already granted by the laws that the governor pergeñó Gioja Menemist deputy when he was in the 90s.

According to journalist Greg Palast, the British newspaper The Guardian, Munk founded Barrick money with arms dealer Adnan Kassoghi and was the guarantor of that crime when he was taken prisoner in the United States by fraud related to the regime of former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Palast, who the lawsuit, Barrick Gold tried unsuccessfully demonstrated that not only transnational environmental damage had occurred in various places on Earth, but also had been responsible, together with the Tanzania police for the murder of fifty-miners. Not surprisingly, in a company directory in which the presence of "influential" as the former CIA director and former U.S. president George Bush senior and the richest man in Chile, Andronico Luksic, and leader staunch Pinochet monopolistic group known as "crocodiles".

Unfortunately, all we have been denouncing in these columns has proved absolutely true and verifiable. Hopefully it is not what we now say that Gioja, the president and Barrick Gold will do everything possible to ensure that no law of glaciers, rather than transnational dynamite start spraying the Andes from San Juan.

Against looting and Plundering

In San Juan, and during three days, brought together organizations and assemblies throughout the country to resist mining Pastera, agribusiness and urban environmental pollution. Require the repeal of laws passed in the 90s and defending the commons.

By Dario Aranda

"Mining large-scale agribusiness and Pastera are part of a single sample extraction and pollution, spurred by businesses and governments, which favors business over the environment and health of the people." It is certain that the guide to Union Assembly Ciudadanas (UAC), formed by hundreds of communities across the country gathered for three days in San Juan, an emblem of the provinces of mining activity. "The ACU-as they are known in space, are a militant and self assembly, made up of organizations that are the first trench against pollution: people threatened by the advance mining communities (rural and urban areas) suffered by spraying, organizations and families victimized by urban industrial pollution. In its ninth national meeting, confirmed the rejection of polluting enterprises, agreed actions (roadblocks, demonstrations and escraches), denounced the veto on the law protecting the glaciers and warned the increasing criminalization of protest. "Against the plunder and pollution," the sentence was re-united to the meeting.

San Juan has five mining projects: three in the study, one in full production since 2005 (Veladero, the Canadian leader in the industry, Barrick Gold) and another about to be built: Pascua Lama (also of Barrick), reported by promoters and detractors as the most ambitious mining project in America, will be the largest, will use 17 trucks with cyanide per month, 370 liters of water per second in a semi-truck of explosives and 200 per month. Pascua Lama will be the first site in the border region of Argentina and Chilean governments created in the last decade, a law that allows a mine-free zone, to kick a dozen companies operating mountains along the 5000 kilometers of mountains .

The interests at stake, it was not surprising that the capital San Juan dawn on Friday, day of the forum with the UAC pasacalles defending questionable activity. "Yes to work. Yes to development. Yes to mining, "the Chicano was used by the Government and the business sector. One child in front of the police, who made surprise checkpoints on routes entering the city, where buses took participants to the meeting. The organizers also denounced a boycott of one sector of the provincial media, which refused to cover an event. According to the UAC, it was a request from the Government (more advertisers). They also recalled that were clogged all posters announcing the meeting.

The forum consisted of work in committees, put together and the whole building. Each committee consisted of twenty people, covering four main areas: mining, urban conflicts, legal and pesticides. And there were two themes throughout the meeting: water and education. Involving 480 people from 40 villages throughout the country. The agreements include: a bi-national action by Pascua Lama for early June (participating organizations of both countries), a massive march in Buenos Aires, actions throughout the country in protest to the criminalization of protest, support for the creation of the International Criminal Court and Environment decided to launch criminal proceedings against company directors and officers. It also highlighted the need to unify and nationalize the fight without losing sight of regional and local resistance, with direct action (blockage of roads, walks, escraches). Throughout the meeting also reported business strategies through education. Appellants were co testimony on universities by firms pursuing teaching critical care in schools (from mining) and textbooks in favor extractive activities.

The UAC require from their first encounters, the repeal of mining laws, passed during the Menem and sustained until the present. The companies always recognized the benefits of the legislation. First, use strictly the Argentine Mining Code, by which the State (national, provincial or municipal) is prohibited from exploiting any site alone. Mining companies have no withholding tax on exports, foreign exchange should not settle (do not enter the money from their sales to the country, everything goes to the outside), do not pay fuel taxes (which we all pay when loading naphtha), and fees for import and enjoyed 30 years of fiscal stability. "There is a legal structure that ensures the companies take everything and leave only pollution, destruction and looting," explained San Juan.

The UAC also confirmed the rejection of the mega-rich water mining, the town of Catamarca Andalgalá, home for a decade of Bajo La Alumbrera deposit, with a dozen complaints about pollution and its executive vice president tried to affect the environment. Catamarca organizations recalled the suspect action by the provincial government, which adopted a very challenged Environmental Impact Report, which gave way to free enterprise.

The veto of the law of glaciers (by the President on November 10 last) was one of the recurring themes. "The veto of Barrick Gold," was called by the UAC, which yesterday, in plenary, adopted a strong awareness campaign on water reservoirs. On April 14 last, Peter Munk, founder of Barrick, was received at Government House by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the governor of San Juan, José Luis Gioja. The photo shows the smiling officer. The UAC recalled that same day, in the town of Rioja Famatina (where Barrick Gold plans to exploit an oil field), women of the Assemblies Ciudadanas Riojanos were suppressed by not allowing the passage of the company. The authors of the aggression-were filmed and photographed, provincial officials and employees of Barrick Gold. "Water is worth more than gold," recalled the delegation riojana.

The next meeting will take place in Libertador General San Martín (Jujuy), home of the company questioned Ledesma, 24 to July 26 and added two crucial lines in the fight against extractive model: land and people.

Barrick CEO meets with Bachelet to speed up Pascua Lama

(LA Terceda) Barrick Gold is making a strong attack in recent days to announce soon the date of its binational Pascua Lama project, which will involve an investment of around U.S. $ 3,000 million.

After the middle of last week the founder and manager of the mine up, Peter Munk, met with the President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, CEO Aaron Regent yesterday joined with the Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet.

Close to 18 hours yesterday and without telling the press, the senior executive of Barrick accompanied by Deputy Director of the company, José Antonio Urrutia, and Minister of Mining, Santiago González, met with Bachelet for about an hour.

And while the minister and the executives made statements to the output, government sources indicate that the visit is part of the senior executive in the last movement of the company before announcing the start of construction of the mining project Pascua Lama gold.

The idea was announced in September, with the assurance that in Chile and Argentina resolve differences and tax that have prevented the start of construction. In the coming days will meet again tax technicians from both countries in Buenos Aires to try to close the gap on the issue of taxation of cross-border services.

Government sources indicate that President Fernandez instructed his main tax authorities for this purpose.

Source / La Terceda

CHILE: Scientist Warns of Threats to Rock Glaciers

By Daniela Estrada





"A new government policy on glaciers adopted by Chile "is a step forward, but it doesn’t resolve all of the problems"

SANTIAGO, Apr 24 (IPS) - A new government policy on glaciers adopted by Chile "is a step forward, but it doesn’t resolve all of the problems," German geographer Alexander Brenning, who blames mining companies for threats to this South American country’s rock glaciers, told IPS.

An assistant professor of geography at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Brenning spoke with IPS after giving a lecture this week on the little-known rock glaciers to geology students at the University of Chile, who had specially invited him.

The expert drew attention in Chile last year after the results of studies he carried out were reported locally. His research in this country found that three large mining companies were affecting several square kilometres of rock glaciers by building roads and other infrastructure and piling sterile material on them.

Brenning specifically pointed his finger at the Andean Division of the state-run National Copper Corporation (CODELCO), the Los Bronces mine operated by the London-based Anglo American mining giant, and Los Pelambres, a Chilean mining company.

In his lecture Wednesday, Brenning explained that rock glaciers are important natural sources of frozen water that contribute to the availability of water supplies during the southern hemisphere summer. And they are threatened not only by mining operations, but by climate change as well, he said.

Under the top layer of rock, these glaciers are 40 to 60 percent ice, he said.

Because it takes thousands of years for rock glaciers to regenerate, and since they are unstable, moving several centimetres a year, building infrastructure on top of them is not recommendable, said Brenning.

Rock glaciers "are very difficult to study because they are not as easily identifiable as typical glaciers, which are white," he told IPS. "They are hard to detect and it is difficult to monitor their movement. This is a technological challenge for geomatics," the discipline of gathering, storing, analysing, interpreting, distributing and using geographic information.

Brenning, who combines analysis of satellite images with aerial photos and field work, believes rock glaciers are found mainly in central Chile, and that their total surface area is approximately 500 square kilometres.

According to his research, the three mining companies have affected 3.2 square kilometres of rock glacier, encompassing between 23 and 35 million cubic metres of water, over the last decade, he said, pointing out that part of that area was literally removed.

His research found that CODELCO removed 1.3 square kilometres by 2005, while Anglo American removed some 20 hectares.

Last year, the two companies responded to such reports by repeating once more that they had the necessary environmental permits to operate their mines – an argument that is questioned by Brenning.

Los Pelambres, in the meantime, denied that rock glaciers even existed.

As a result of global warming, South America’s glaciers, which are an important source of meltwater, are in fast retreat.

A new awareness of the need to protect glaciers in Chile has emerged since 2006, when the government of Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) approved the environmental impact study of the Pascua Lama mine, owned by Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation, which has been fought tooth and nail by environmentalists and local residents.

Construction of the mine, which straddles the border between Chile and Argentina in the Andes mountains, remains on hold.

The company initially planned to remove three glaciers on the Chilean side, in order to get to the minerals underneath them. But that plan was vetoed by Chilean authorities.

However, the glaciers have already been affected by the prospecting, according to different sources.

This and similar conflicts over mining projects, added to the retreat of glaciers around the world due to climate change, prompted the government to draft a policy for the protection and conservation of glaciers, which was finally approved on Apr. 14.

But some environmental organisations are demanding passage of a stricter law for the protection of glaciers, which remains stalled in parliament.

Although the administration of socialist President Michelle Bachelet argues that the government policy is easier and faster to implement than a law, environmentalists say it was the lobbying carried out by the mining corporations that tipped the balance of political support towards the first option.

While Brenning sees the new policy as "a step forward," he takes issue with several aspects. For example, it fails to specifically define what a rock glacier is, he said.

He also complains that it leaves the approval of projects that affect the glaciers in the hands of the environmental impact assessment system, which in his view has shown itself to be inefficient and ineffective in such cases.

He also questions the invocation of the so-called "higher interests of the nation."

The policy approved by the government this month says that "Although the policy states the need to preserve the glaciers, their appropriate management must be considered when the specific needs of the watershed so require, just as eventual interventions will be considered when required by the higher interests of the nation."

"Perhaps what should be considered is the creation of a policy on land use, to help concentrate these projects in certain areas and keep other areas free of mining," Brenning suggested.

"It worries me to see projects that in the future could affect areas high up in the mountains where glaciers and rock glaciers are found," he said.

He also said Chile should focus on awareness-raising and education among geologists, geographers, government officials and the general public, especially regarding rock glaciers, about which there is very little understanding.

"Rock glaciers are a hidden, little-known phenomenon. Even in the scientific world, there is very little literature on them. The Alps have been more closely studied," said Brenning.

The government policy on glaciers states that so far more than 3,100 glaciers have been identified in Chile, with a total estimated surface area of 20,188 square kilometres. Of that total, more than 15,000 square kilometres are made up of the North and South Patagonian Ice Fields.

The surface area that has not yet been mapped is estimated at 4,700 square kilometres of ice.

The policy also states that the majority of Chilean glaciers are retreating and have experienced losses in surface area and thickness in response to climate change.

"The retreat and thinning detected in Chile in the last 30 years have accelerated, to up to twice as fast in the last 10 years," it says.

Brenning is currently working on monitoring two rock glaciers located in the mountains around the Chilean capital, using instruments like GPS (global positioning system). (END/2009)

Fight Against Metal Mining

BOTH DEBATES
Fight to the total metal mining



At 9.30 began the 9th forum UAC was an impromptu press conference. The first answer was the Nobel prize, Pérez Esquivel, who emphasized that "it is possible that the president veto the law of glaciers, because we can live without oil, not gold, not cars, but we can not live without water. What World We leave to our children and grandchildren? predation or we accept the social resistance. "



Although Javier Rodríguez Pardo began his presentation by saying that very quiet and not against mining, "which I put the glasses come from mining," he said, but quickly cautioned that it fight opencast mining, which is used large mining to extract ore from low grade, ie low concentration and very scattered. "The minerals were exhausted and companies use extraction methods perverse exploitation, pollution and plundering," said pretty excited. Later he spoke of the reunion of Peter Munk, Barrick main shareholder, with President Cristina Kirchner, a few days ago, "this meeting was to ask the president to rush the Pascua Lama project, hence the question was asked about some weights and other weights demanded more, "he said without giving further details.

With the same tone, Marta Maffei noted that "it is not environment versus development, it is plunder vs environment, because development is a word, that is to grow, improve and distribute the resources."

Lucio Cuenca, the Chilean group OLCA said Barrick has already intervened in glaciers Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza, near Easter, which have their counterpart in the Argentine side Lama. "There are studies that indicate that these glaciers have decreased by 50%, they have built 13 Barrick probing platforms, other platforms around 150 glaciers and a walk over glaciers Toro 1 and 2."

The prosecutor of Tucumán, Antonio Gomez, said that "we can not do that our rights are respected when impunity is the central problem. The only way to stop environmental criminals to jail and do it or not is the decision of the judges and prosecutors in the country. "

Deputy national Fernanda Reyes, the ARI, called for a paradigm shift, "we have lost the resources we need to start thinking from another location and the environmental issue should be a priority," he said.

Neighbours del Valle de Uco protest José Luis Gioja decisions

Neighbours del Valle de Uco attend assemblies

Valle De Uco
18 de Abril de 2009 |17:00

Assemblies and socio-environmental activists across the country will gather in San Juan, to "just say the current model of looting" and shed a different model based on a conception of property. Several neighbors of the Uco Valley to attend the assemblies.


The Union of Citizen Assemblies (UAC) covered the last year to meet in Catamarca be involved in the mining heart of the monster. " The challenge this year is even greater, since San Juan is its governor, Jose Luis Gioja, the political representative of the largest mining interests, someone to whom the chairman of Barrick Gold comes to visit in person.

The journey of encounters through the provinces with the aim of consolidating the message "against looting and pollution" is taking shape and is now the venue San Juan, 24, 25 and April 26, 2009 in provincial capital, to "learn about the different social-issues of each region and understand its relationship that they are based on a political and economic model of development based on the devastation of life, pollution and the plundering of our goods common. "

As is currently the hot debate over the presidential veto to the law of glaciers, will be reinforced ideas about the importance of protecting water sources with a forum-debate on Thursday, April 23 at the University of San Juan, with tables to be attended by specialists from across the country.

Some details on the organization of the meeting and what is happening with mining pollution in San Juan, gave Graciela Fernandez in an online dialogue on the site www.biodiversidadla.org Fernandez is a member of the Assembly San Juan against pollution and looting.

"We are in defense of common goods such as glaciers. We are opposed not only to megaminería but the entire political project only to pursue personal interests and elite groups, using a model that serves few and in no way at all. Gioja is because this fight for their interests, to defend their own business in San Juan mounted as Veladero and Pascua Lama is, "says Graciela.

- Why San Juan?

- "It seems important to generate a debate that is missing in San Juan and that the possibility of installing another position on what is now a concept that is closed, authoritarian government to impose its censorship. In San Juan we have to win a space to discuss the mining development that is taking place, which is not simply a 'model development' is actually a tax change our lives, works, links, families, that is our Identities. "

- To what extent there is an awareness of people about this tax that is being done, the destruction of identity?

- "The whole world realizes what Gioja does, what it is authoritarian, but that censorship has come down to self-censorship, which leads to non-participation and immobilization. This makes it Gioja face washed by a government with a popular social alleged policy, but deep down the San Juan knows what happens. We settled in places with projections and people come and say things like 'I knew this was not right' and give examples of sick people by mining and the problems generated by situations. "

- That people who come will be integrated into the assembly?

- "Not quite as integrated, rather Gioja know what they do and have a quiet support for our work."

- What is government retaliation for his activities?

- "There are colleagues who are facing threats. Since it is the assembly colleagues have prosecuted others who were prisoners, some who can not work as the case of Ernesto Lloveras who is a journalist and can not practice their profession. When we projected the seat-of-night police cars come and settle nearby. Because the law still prohibits the cinema audience is not even carry the projector. But coercion is, there are many police hanging around in San Juan. Anyway we have the conviction not to back down, you always have a wide call and not be afraid. People come at the national level and that the meeting is a recognition, even internationally, we can ensure that the development of activities. "

"Recently, the president announced in a hydroelectric dam in San Juan, Snails, and promised energy for the whole country. However for the assemblies is clear that it is energy for the company, Barrick Gold and other mining, because "the area is full of snails from mining projects." The imminent opening of a binational mining project Pascua Lama is directly related to the growing need for energy and haste in the time of construction of Caracoles, which has even been denounced for breaching safety rules after that embarrassment. "

- What is your relationship to the press in San Juan, as you can make complaints related to snails?

- "Except for some journalists who are persecuted, do not allow. El Diario de Cuyo is always on the side of power, moreover, is antisanjuanino the terrible damage he has done with his lies to create a breakdown of our identity. "

- What expectations for UAC 9?

- "Our greatest hope is the people coming from everywhere and with all the strength to raise their issues, and support our local issues. Also to achieve progress in the UAC to a position even more national. We come from the experiences of the assemblies, then the regional, and now we want to build a more domestic front, as they are always "one", ie how to work the cross is the same, regardless of the enclave they have. So we have to unify the struggle to maintain identity. "

Where do they get the water for these mining projects?

"Assemblies, researchers and activists are strongly considering the conflict between mining and polluting production activities as agriculture and livestock due to, among other things, the competition for the use of a scarce resource: water.







Following this line of work, talked with engineer Biodiversidadla Juan José Ramos, president of the Association of Independent Frutihorticultores vignerons and San Juan, to deepen the problems being experienced by that province will host the UAC 9.

Ramos explains that "the wine is very complicated, several years ago that we do not have profitability, we have a government that has defended us. It is an economy in the San Juan-Mendoza, who manages a group of no more than four companies, including Peñaflor. If the State fails, the group does what it wants monopoly with 20 thousand producers in the region. "

He also said that "the strategy is to shrink the state agricultural sector, concentrated, and thus more easily negotiate the water."

So from economic strangulation are small farmers diversify to survive?

"Today, no producer has only grapes, but they always have another activity besides produces melon, garlic, seeds, olives."

- This affects the production of the main product, the grapes?

"This last harvest we are leaving will be the smaller grape harvest in the last 40 years. Standing by the low profitability, the last five years many producers have gone: 17% of small have disappeared because they can not sustain the activity. We have also been affected by climate change and new pests, which makes losing the crop. "

Surprising that San Juan, the largest producer of grape-bearing in mind that Argentina is the world's largest exporter of concentrated grape juice, chooses to strangle the producers.

"Today we find that we will not have grape. San Juan in the middle of the grape is intended to make that juice. " It is required that the provincial plans provide water from producers to actors, so Ramos says "next to the problem of lack of profitability we advance the mining project, you need our water."

According to Ramos, this reallocation of resources is due to the shortage: "Every producer has a right to water law, allocated per hectare, and is historical. For many years, new rights suspended because not enough water to cover what had already been granted. Now that the mines are giving them the right to water, as we need water for agriculture. Sumale to that modification of the environment: 60 mil holes search made in a single year in the Cordillera. There is no inch of the San Juan mountain range that is not under concession. Where do they get the water for these mining projects, whose main input is water. "

Given this change in reality the producers come to protest, but the springs of the State are used to contain the discontent: "Those who oppose the mining project is not receiving any aid from the government. A producer complains receives nothing. Moreover, the situation we live in groups and we are at the forefront of the complaint is of constant threats and pressure on our sources of production through the inspections, as happened in the era of military rule, the era that was already involved in this activity and well I had consequences. "

"The San Juan are very pressured, and the people content with the regional parties and public works. We party every week, we had the feast of the sun, where they spent 14 million pesos, Susana Giménez took to read that mining is good. It is very difficult. Hopefully, the day the people of San Juan to rebel is not too late, even if it will help us to be before, "Ramos concludes.

Permanent Link: http://www.mdzol.com/mdz/nota/120396

The Real Blunder of Pascua Lama

Friday June 30, 2006 03:39 PM

On June 21, 2006, a Chilean court returned two of Barrick Gold's Pascua Lama mining leases to prospector Rodolfo Villar, who had agreed to sell them to Barrick but had been paid only 10,000 pesos ($20 CDN). The ruling could have serious consequences since the leases are listed as Barrick's property in a 2004 Protocol to the Chile-Argentina "Treaty of Mining Integration" which could be invalidated as a result. This analysis by Lucio Cuenca, National Coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA) was first published in El Mostrador on June 26, 2006

Pascua Lama exists as a binational mining project because in the year 1997 the governments of Argentina and Chile signed a "Treaty of Mining Integration" whose ambit of application is the border region along the Andes and which constitutes the legal framework governing the development of the mining business. Before this treaty, it was not possible to mine deposits located in this mountainous region because they were in "borderized zones" in the case of Chile, and in Argentina, "border zones" and/or "security zones", spaces which in both countries were subject to restrictive laws.

The transnational mining companies, Barrick Gold in particular, pursuaded the governments of both countries that it would be beneficial to create a legal instrument to facilitate the mining business in the border regions.

The recent ruling of the 14th Civil Court of Santiago (case #1912-2001), which overturned the sale of mining claims carried out in March of 1997 in which Rodolfo Villar García ceded to mining company Minera Nevada -- subsidiary of Barrick Gold in Chile -- the rights to properties where the project Pascua Lama is being constructed, brings the thorny problems of this complex conflict to a forefront. The judge completely nullified the contract of sale between Villar and Barrick Gold and ordered the return of the rights of ownership which existed previously in the Amarillo Norte and Tesoro properties (Pascua Lama being located in this last property), returning them to their previous state when the prospector Rodolfo Villar was the owner of these mining rights.

Those of us who are opposed to the Pascua Lama project no matter who the owner be understand that this is a property dispute between miners and is a circumstantial setback for mining operation. It isn't the end of the story. We quote from the declarations of Villar's lawyer, Hernán Montealegre, who has said that, "If there is an interesting offer, this possibility will be examined by Mr. Villar and I don't think that Barrick would commit suicide and has to be ready to pay something that comes near to the real value of this property and clean the shameful image that they have for having swindled a person by paying him 10,000 pesos and by having violated the Constitution."

But what certainly could constitute a bigger obstacle for Pascua Lama are the implications of the ruling regarding some of the legal points generated by the Mining Treaty with Argentina to concretely facilitate the development of the binational project. The Mining Treaty establishes that under petition from investors to establish operations along the border, the parties must sign Additional Specific Protocols, where the "area of operations" and the procedures will be determined for each project.

In the case of Pascua Lama, this protocol was signed and set into law by the Decree of the Ministry of Mining on December 11 of 2004. In this protocol -- among other things -- the "area of operations" is detailed, its limits set, and Nevada Mining Company Ltd.'s 193 mining claims "already constituted" and the 8 "in process" are identified. In this list figure "Amarillos" at 3,600 hectares and "Tesoros" at 2,100 hectares. These mining claims are those the recent ruling returned to Rodolfo Villar, and one could conclude thus that the decree contains serious flaws and should be itself nullified.

It is painfully obvious that the Chilean government has enacted this Decree containing these defects. One might think that the government didn't know. But this case has a long history which the authorities could not ignore. For example, in this case a precautionary order was decreed over the disputed claims which "prohibits the signing of acts and contracts and/or encumbrences and/or transferrals over each of the aforementioned mining properties." Therefore, it was sufficient to request a certificate of ownership valid in the mining district of Vallenar. Our authorities, when they want to make things easier for the "big investors", let themselves be easily carried off and act above the law.

Focusing on the principle of invalidation, Article 53 and subsequent articles of the Administrative Procedures (Law 19.880) which regulate the acts of the authorities that dictated the Decree, states that this same should be nullified administratively on account of a serious flaw. This could be the moment to start to rectify a series of other irregularities and illegalities which have been denounced, but which the governments in power, ceding to the pressure of the transnational mining company, have systematically ignored. It's up to the Minister of Mining and President Bachelet.

Renewed faith in September

Lenders expect to be called this month by the company Barrick to have any clue about the start of construction of the mine. The Government awaits the official announcement at the close of the first half. Chile also hurries the project.

Written by DANIEL TEJADA
http://www.diariodecuyo.com.ar/home/new_noticia.php?noticia_id=337363

The chambers of providers agreed that local miners again in September as the tentative date of commencement of construction of the binational Pascua Lama mine. Further after the meeting last Tuesday at Casa Rosada among Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the dome top of Barrick, including founder Peter Munk.

The company still awaits agreement Argentine Chilean taxes on cross-border services to make the announcement indivisible. And do not risk any date. The provincial government put it in terms desiderativos: "We hope to complete before the first announcement of the construction project," said Jose Luis Gioja in his annual message on April 1 in the Legislature. However, the political backing of the meeting last Tuesday apuraría to the announcement in May, it was learned from sources described.

According to the Chilean ambassador Luis Maira Aguirre, unlock the item for tax is shared between the two nations. "We do not know much more than they know the common people," said the manager of the Argentine Chamber of Mining Services (Casemi), Donna Alexander. The institution expects a business meeting with representatives of Barrick 22 or April 23. Contained in the Agenda Veladero and Pascua Lama.

According to unofficial data handling Casemi, the manager of the binational project, Ron Kettles, is in Canada and has about three months of hard work ahead, with the intention of defining the start of construction for August-September. "Apparently they are going to have definitions. But we do not want to meet with enthusiastic people from Barrick, "said Donna.

"Actually the last thing we have is that Pascua Lama leaves after the winter season. We might take in September, with very good mood. That would start a little movement throughout the service companies, "said Chamber President Mining Services Enterprises (Cepsm), Adrian Cellura. "We also know that in April or May would be an official announcement," he added.

So, the picture showing the two chambers is similar in the midst of uncertainty.

"There is more than what the Governor said. We hope to announce the start of construction before the first semester, because the tax issue is not resolved. We depend on it, "said Secretary of State for Mining, Felipe Saavedra.

However, a source area of the Secretariat of Mining of the nation entrusted WHOSE MINING in Buenos Aires that the version circulated in Chile some remaining sectoral permits that have to do with the electrical energy used by the mine. In this case, the delay of the delay line tax camuflaría other certifications.

¿Remaining sectoral permits? "To my knowledge, no. What is missing is the tax issue and there would be no more obstacles, "Saavedra replied. "We hope that this issue is resolved and the construction of the mine should start in September, if not, we lose another year," the provincial official. In the framework of the Argentine-Chile Integration, held in San Juan last week, Ambassador Maira Aguirre spoke on WHOSE MINING binational project. "We hope that what we have been waiting to happen for several years. Which has a technical understanding to the complex problems of the determination of tax, especially for productive activities in the indivisible nature of the border we can solve for the good of both countries in the regions where they are to be based projects, the region Atacama in Chile and San Juan in Argentina, "said the diplomat.

"I saw the governor and we've been pushing heavily to his side. We have made great efforts since January, took five technical meetings, and we hope to unlock and produce a technical reflection of the great political agreement that the two presidents and the two countries to launch this project, "said Maira Aguirre.

Opportune Moment

"If seen from a financial point of view, is a project of gold and the prices are good. On the other hand many of the equipment used in mining activities are available. Before he had to wait two or three years, now we have availability and lowered prices a bit, "said Saavedra.

For its part, Maira Aguirre stressed that the political will at the international level the implementation of the mining project. "In a time of crisis a 1,000 billion dollars of investment that can give impetus to the productive activity, which is an example of strong investment in time, is of great value for the two countries," the ambassador said.

"Anyone who can show that you can now launch and promote a dynamic project, that represents a signal to the international community, countries of serious, well-structured and capable of hosting even in difficult conditions to foreign investment even when dynamic and supports the productive development, "the Chilean diplomat. Service providers have the minutes and the expectation is growing. "For those providers would be an injection of joy or hope great. Because today, but lenders are not having a bad time, is not the best, "said Cellura.

According to its president, all partners have Cepsm of work, but some have had to reduce its services in most of the items, especially on transport, operations, equipment rental and camps.

The reason is that there were teams that junior explorers have begun to do their jobs and have left. And others had started and instead of drilling to 100 percent are drilling 50 per cent. "It is estimated that the budget we had to take him to reach for the whole year. And the half that have divided in two, before and after the winter, "said Cellura.

Donna described the situation somewhat more terminal. "The truth is that companies are providing a pretty complicated. Has slowed throughout much despair and grazing is the financial situation of many companies from San Juan. Special trucks for transportation of loads, sprinkler trucks, drilling equipment, recruitment of exploration camps and catering is slowed too much because everything was stopped exploration, "explained manager Casemi.

With the start of construction of the Pascua Lama scenario will change dramatically for local entrepreneurs, despite the international crisis. "We estimate that it will be four times what it was Veladero. If we changed the life Veladero, Pascua Lama more. But do not claim victory because we know there are many jobs to be done from Chile. Works great. So we want to meet people from Barrick to tell us what you have planned, "said Donna.

"Pascua Lama is a project that been waiting for over three years. While utilities do not have left many employees and are maintained, there comes a time when it is complicated. Have bet all the miracle of a new project, big, "said Cellura.

"We must have patience. And it also has the patience to know the pilot companies to reach. Because it would be a very ugly picture that companies reach out to human resources and financial resources to begin to hand, robbed and drowned when they begin to demand services for Pascua Lama, "the president Cepsm.


ESCENARIO: PASCUA LAMA

Renuevan la fe en Septiembre

Los prestadores esperan ser convocados este mes por la empresa Barrick para tener alguna pista sobre el inicio de la construcción de la mina. El Gobierno aguarda el anuncio oficial al cierre del primer semestre. Chile también apura el proyecto.
DANIEL TEJADA
Las cámaras de prestadores de servicios mineros locales coincidieron en señalar nuevamente a septiembre como la fecha posible de inicio de la construcción de la mina binacional Pascua Lama. Más aún luego de la reunión mantenida el martes pasado en Casa Rosada, entre Cristina Fernández de Kirchner y la cúpula máxima de Barrick, incluido el socio fundador Peter Munk.

La compañía aguarda todavía el acuerdo argentino chileno por los tributos sobre los servicios transfronterizos indivisibles para hacer el anuncio. Y no arriesga fecha alguna. El Gobierno provincial lo puso en términos desiderativos: “Esperamos para antes que concluya el primer semestre el anuncio de la construcción del proyecto”, dijo José Luis Gioja en su mensaje anual el 1 de abril en la Legislatura. Sin embargo, el espaldarazo político del encuentro del martes pasado apuraría el anuncio a mayo, trascendió de fuentes calificadas.

Según el embajador chileno Luis Maira Aguirre, la fuerza por destrabar el tema impositivo es compartida entre ambas naciones. “No sabemos mucho más de lo que sabe la gente común”, dijo el gerente de la Cámara Argentina de Servicios Mineros (Casemi), Alejandro Donna. La institución empresaria espera una reunión con representantes de Barrick el 22 o el 23 de abril. En el temario figura Veladero y también Pascua Lama.

Según los datos extraoficiales que maneja Casemi, el responsable del proyecto binacional, Ron Kettles, está en Canadá y tiene unos tres meses de mucho trabajo por delante, con la intención de definir el inicio de la construcción para agosto-septiembre. “Aparentemente van a tener definiciones. Pero no queremos entusiasmarnos hasta reunirnos con la gente de Barrick”, advirtió Donna.

“Realmente lo último que tenemos nosotros es que Pascua Lama sale para después de la temporada de invierno. Podríamos tomar septiembre, con muy buenas ganas. Ahí empezaría un poco todo el movimiento de las empresas de servicios”, dijo el presidente de la Cámara de Empresas Prestadoras de Servicios Mineros (Cepsm), Adrián Cellura. “También se sabe que para abril o para mayo tendríamos un anuncio oficial”, agregó.

Así las cosas, el panorama que presentan ambas cámaras es similar en medio de la incertidumbre.

“No hay más que lo que dijo el Gobernador. Aspiramos a que se anuncie el inicio de la construcción antes del primer semestre, porque el tema tributario no está resuelto. Dependemos de eso”, explicó el secretario de Estado de Minería, Felipe Saavedra.

Sin embargo, una fuente del ámbito de la Secretaría de Minería de la Nación confió a CUYO MINERO que en Buenos Aires circula la versión de que en Chile restan algunos permisos sectoriales que tienen que ver con la energía eléctrica que utilizaría la mina. En tal caso, la demora del acuerdo tributario camuflaría el retardo de otras certificaciones.

¿Restan permisos sectoriales? “Que yo sepa, no. Lo que está faltando es el tema tributario y no habría más obstáculos”, contestó Saavedra. “Aspiramos a que se solucione este tema y la construcción de la mina debiera comenzar en septiembre, si no, perdemos otro año más”, concluyó el funcionario provincial. En el marco del Comité de Integración Argentino-Chilena, realizado en San Juan la semana pasada, el embajador Maira Aguirre habló con CUYO MINERO sobre el proyecto binacional. “Nosotros esperamos que ocurra lo que venimos aguardando hace varios años. Que haya un entendimiento técnico, que los problemas complejos de la determinación tributaria, especialmente de las acciones productivas de carácter indivisible en la frontera las podamos resolver en pro del bien de los dos países de las regiones donde van a estar radicados estos proyectos, la región de Atacama en Chile y San Juan en la Argentina”, consideró el diplomático.

“He visto al gobernador y en eso he estado a su lado empujando fuertemente. Hemos hecho un gran esfuerzo desde enero, llevamos cinco reuniones técnicas, y esperamos desbloquear y producir un reflejo técnico del gran acuerdo político que tienen las dos presidentas y los dos países para iniciar este proyecto”, agregó Maira Aguirre.

Momento oportuno

“Si se ve desde el punto de vista financiero, es un proyecto de oro y los precios están buenos. Y por otro lado muchos de los equipos usados en la actividad minera están disponibles. Antes había que esperar dos o tres años, ahora hay disponibilidad y han bajado un poco los precios”, opinó Saavedra.

Por su parte, Maira Aguirre destacó la dimensión política que tendrá en el plano internacional la concreción del proyecto minero. “En un tiempo de crisis un proyecto de 1.000 millones de dólares de inversión que puede darle dinamismo a la actividad productiva, que es un ejemplo de inversión en tiempos estrechos, es de gran valor para los dos países”, dijo el embajador.

“El que pueda mostrar hoy día que puede poner en marcha e impulsar dinámicamente un proyecto, eso representa una señal a la comunidad internacional, de países serios, bien estructurados, y capaces de acoger aún en condiciones difíciles a la inversión extranjera aún cuando es dinámica y favorece el desarrollo productivo”, agregó el diplomático chileno. Las empresas prestadoras de servicios cuentan los minutos y la expectativa crece. “Para los prestadores sería una inyección de alegría o de esperanza muy grande. Porque hoy por hoy, si bien los prestadores no están pasando un mal momento, tampoco es el mejor”, consideró Cellura.

Según su presidente, todos los asociados de la Cepsm tienen trabajo, pero algunos han tenido que reducir sus servicios en la mayoría de los rubros, en especial en materia de transporte, operaciones, alquiler de máquinas y de campamentos.

El motivo es que hubo equipos de exploradores juniors que habían empezado a hacer sus tareas y las han abandonado. Y otros habían empezado y en vez de perforar el 100 por ciento están perforando el 50 por ciento. “Es como que dosificaron el presupuesto que tenían para llevarlo a que alcance para todo el año. Y a esa mitad la han dividido en dos, para antes y para después del invierno”, explicó Cellura.

Donna describió la situación algo más terminal. “La verdad es que las empresas prestadoras están en un punto bastante complicado. Se ha frenado todo mucho y está rozando la desesperación la situación financiera de muchas empresas sanjuaninas. Los camiones especiales para transporte de cargas, camiones regadores, los equipos perforadores, la contratación de campamentos de exploración y el catering se frenaron mucho porque todo lo que era exploración se paró”, explicó el gerente de Casemi.

Con el inicio de la construcción de Pascua Lama el escenario local cambiará radicalmente para los empresarios, pese a la crisis internacional. “Hay que calcular que va a ser cuatro veces lo que fue Veladero. Si Veladero nos cambió la vida, Pascua Lama mucho más. Pero no hay que cantar victoria porque sabemos que hay muchos trabajos que se van a hacer desde Chile. Trabajos grandes. Por eso nos queremos reunir con la gente de Barrick para que nos cuente lo que tiene previsto”, aseguró Donna.

“Pascua lama es un proyecto que llevamos esperando hace más de tres años. Si bien las empresas de servicios no han dado de baja a muchos empleados y los están manteniendo, llega un momento en que eso se complica. Han apostado todos al milagro de un proyecto nuevo, grande”, dijo Cellura.

“Tenemos que tener paciencia. Y la paciencia trae también saber pilotear las empresas para poder llegar. Porque sería un panorama muy feo que las empresas lleguen agotadas de recursos humanos y de recursos financieros y empiecen a dar manotazos de ahogado cuando comience la demanda de servicios para Pascua Lama”, concluyó el presidente de Cepsm.

"The law was drafted by glaciers is ambiguous"

"Pascua Lama, which is so complicated by the presence of bodies of ice cover was redesigned with a pit not interfering. Lost 17% of the reserves. "

Juan Pablo Milana - Geólogo glaciólogo (above picture)




Translated from original article in

http://www.diariodecuyo.com.ar/home/new_noticia.php?noticia_id=334015


written by DANIEL TEJADA Diario de Cuyo


Adviser to the Independent Citizens Foundation, specializes in ice and has worked in at least one mining project moving glaciers in Chile.

Juan Pablo Milana is the advisor to the Independent Citizens Foundation (Fuci) that discussed last week with specialists from the Chamber of Mines about the law vetoed by glacier Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. In the presence of the Senators of the National Front for the Victoria Marina and Cesar Gioja Riofrío, progress was made on points of agreement to propose a new policy that protects the ice from the mountain. In a conversation with WHOSE MINING, Milana ruled defender mining controls.

- Read the law of glaciers vetoed Cristina?

Well, actually I read a lot before the veto and I attempted several times to meet with the senators and the Environment Committee of the Senate before they were to tell the bad points of that text, because no condecían a law of glaciers.

- What was wrong?

I always say that we must learn from the mistakes you committed. The first mistake was marrying a law and a national inventory of glaciers with an institute, in this case Ianigla (Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences), which has already taken 35 years and did nothing. Only did the inventory of glaciers in the basin of the Rio Mendoza. Thinking about giving this Pharaonic seems so silly. He is a very widespread. I believe that a national law has to encourage horizontal growth in the provinces and not favor one province with this budget, which will be Mendoza, and the rest of the provinces are going to look. And I can assure you that it is impossible to monitor all glaciers in the country from Mendoza.



The ideal of a law that would be of glaciers resulting budget to the provinces with glaciers, which will generate an institute with offices cryosphere.

- Is the law of glaciers?



Yes, I never said that a law is not necessary to ice. On the contrary. But as drafted was a bit vague and included terms and definitions that make it gray. We want a law that is inevitable and white does not give rise to gray because that does not suit us. If we want to protect the ice, say "ice". Period.

- What we know about glaciers in San Juan? Do we know how many there are, briefly, where are they located?

I've tried to go in groups, but the lack of support for these studies is impressive. To address the study of all the glaciers in San Juan need a fairly large support. We have gone with our resources to the mountain, with equipment provided, as we like but we have never had support. The problem in San Juan is ignorance. There was recently a meeting convened by the Chamber of Mines and I was horrified to hear the director of the Department of Water (Jorge Million) saying that the glaciers did not have a significant role in the discharge of the Rio San Juan. Of course I told him everything that he had to say. That shows ignorance. And if you do not know something, do not you go to protect. So it is good that the nation is down from a line to say that glaciers are important and that we must study them and protect them while the local government departments to say no.

-If I could summarize in one sentence you should say what the law of glaciers, what would it be?

-In fact, if I were a legislator, he would have changed the title and would have "law of ice." Because I believe that the philosophy of law must be the protection of water resources in the solid state. And there is a law on water but there is a law of ice. But the name "glacial" is a box-office ... then he has "glacier." But if the law read "Protect bodies of ice that remained over two years on the ground ready. Gone are the gray areas: ice, protecting it. - You considers himself anti-mining "?

No, not at all. I am pro-environment and believe the mining industry needed one. I've always said. So no I agree with many groups who say "no to mining", but get into a car that is made, half of mining products. I'm not at all "anti-mining" even though I have cataloged as such. And it could be because I am not a geologist. But I think you have to do a proper assessment of the pros and cons before you start a mine. If you really need it or how we are going to do to use that to develop. Developed countries used mining but had a plan of reinvestment.

- Is it possible to think without affecting glaciers in mining? What major public works such as tunnel Agua Negra?

Yes, absolutely. In fact the Pascua Lama project that is so complicated by the presence of bodies of ice cover was redesigned in a pit with no interference. Lost 17 percent of gold reserves but good, everything is possible.

Of course this is a bid. Employers will want to get the juice to the mountain the most able and hence the role of the state and NGOs, to which also belong to limit it a bit. The important thing is to have open discussion.

- Is the movement of glaciers or is it science fiction?

It is perfectly possible. You can move mountains. The proof of the pit mine in Chile in the second region that is almost 800 meters deep and 2 miles long. They made a mountain upside down, well impressive. The same with the glaciers. The ice weighs three times less than the rock. Trucks giants have their spare capacity. As defenders of irrigators, when I was in Chile, we did a project to modify the plan of moving ice that the company was facing.

- What kept the original potential of the glacier?

No one knows that. It was a test and then the Chilean law establishes compensation. In the analysis of this breaking of the ice company accepted that it would not be successful. If it was, the better.

But we had to pay compensation for such breakage. They had to build a dam in height. We gave our verdict: we can do but there are no guarantees it will work.

- What is the worst case scenario if it was to work without effective controls on the glaciers? What would be the worst possible damage to the glaciers?

-How are things given, the biggest problems I see in the current mining operation would be in the water emerging, not glaciers. Logically, the glaciers are going to be affected in one way or another. Are burning 220,000 liters of fuel per day or something. This produces a warming, combined with the dust that is generated from the movement of machinery and explosions. This dust settles on the glaciers and the melting increases and the deterioration progresses. A possible scenario is that there glaciers disappear and the big guys are a little polluted, because that dust is not very good.

- But can be moderate with controls?

-At least you can know what happens. So, you can sample and see how is the evolution of water quality that comes from the glaciers. We proposed a series of checks, because sometimes natural disasters happen, accidents happen and that is unpredictable. So we in the area of Pascua Lama had proposed a camera system connected on-line, so anyone could see how they are conducting operations. That is the problem that I see in Veladero.

A glaciology is entered from three different professions, according to Milana. Are physicists, who study the ice crystallography, how ice is formed. They are also geographers, who study the formation of glaciers, but a bit more superficially. And the geologists who study it as part of the surface and the earth's crust. Milana graduated from the BA in geology in the year'87 and graduated from the Ph.D. program in'91, both studied at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan. His doctoral dissertation will not be referred to the glaciology because no guardian for such studies. Glaciologist title does not exist, like the sedimentologist. But disciplines are studying and Milana credited with publications in journals, he said.

“La ley de glaciares estaba redactada de manera ambigua”
Asesor de la Fundación Ciudadanos Independientes, es especialista en hielos y ha trabajado en al menos un proyecto minero de traslado de glaciares en Chile.

DANIEL TEJADA

Juan Pablo Milana es el asesor de la Fundación Ciudadanos Independientes (Fuci) que debatió la semana pasada con los especialistas de la Cámara Minera acerca de la ley de glaciares vetada por Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. En presencia de los senadores nacionales del Frente para la Victoria César Gioja y Marina Riofrío, se avanzó en puntos de coincidencia para proponer un nuevo texto normativo que proteja los hielos de la alta montaña. En diálogo con CUYO MINERO, Milana se pronunció defensor de la minería con controles.

-¿Leyó la ley de glaciares que vetó Cristina?

-Bueno, de hecho la leí mucho antes de que la vetara y varias veces hice el intento de reunirme con los senadores y con la Comisión de Medio Ambiente del Senado antes de que se tratara, para indicarles los puntos malos de ese texto, porque no condecían con una ley de glaciares.

-¿Qué era lo malo?

-Yo siempre digo que hay que aprender de los errores que uno comete. El primer error es casar una ley y un inventario nacional de glaciares con un instituto, en este caso el Ianigla (Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales), que ya lleva 35 años y no hizo nada. Hizo sólo el inventario de glaciares de la cuenca del Río Mendoza. Pensar en darle esta tarea tan faraónica me parece tonto. Además es un país muy extendido. Yo creo que una ley nacional tiene que impulsar el crecimiento horizontal en las provincias y no favorecer una provincia con todo este presupuesto, que va a ser Mendoza, y el resto de las provincias van a mirar. Y te puedo asegurar que es imposible monitorear todos los glaciares del país desde Mendoza.



Lo ideal de una ley de glaciares sería que se derivara presupuesto a las provincias que tienen glaciares, que se generara un instituto de criósfera con delegaciones.

-¿Es necesaria la ley de glaciares?



-Sí, yo nunca he dicho que no sea necesaria una ley de hielos. Al contrario. Pero tal como estaba redactada era un poco ambigua e incluía términos y definiciones que la hacían gris. Nosotros queremos una ley blanca que sea ineludible y no dé lugar a interpretaciones grises porque eso no nos conviene. Si queremos defender los hielos, digamos “hielo”. Punto.

-¿Qué sabemos de los glaciares de San Juan? ¿Sabemos cuántos son, someramente, dónde están ubicados?

-Yo he tratado de ir formando grupos, pero la falta de apoyo para estos estudios es impresionante. Para encarar el estudio de todos los glaciares de San Juan necesitamos un apoyo bastante grueso. Nosotros hemos ido con nuestros recursos a la montaña, con equipos prestados, porque nos gusta, pero nunca hemos tenido apoyo. El problema en San Juan es la ignorancia. Hubo hace poco una reunión convocada por la Cámara Minera y yo quedé horrorizado de escucharlo al director del Departamento de Hidráulica (Jorge Millón) diciendo que los glaciares no tenían un rol significativo en las descargas del Río San Juan. Por supuesto le dije todo lo que le tenía que decir. Eso muestra la ignorancia. Y si vos no sabés de algo, no lo vas a proteger. Por eso es bueno que desde la Nación se baje una línea de decir que los glaciares son importantes y que hay que estudiarlos y protegerlos aunque las reparticiones públicas locales digan que no.

-Si pudiera resumir en una frase lo que debiera decir la ley de glaciares, ¿qué sería?

-Justamente, si yo fuera legislador, le habría cambiado el título y habría puesto “ley de hielos”. Porque yo creo que la filosofía de la ley tiene que ser la protección del recurso hídrico en el estado sólido. Y hay una ley de aguas pero no hay una ley de hielos. Pero como el nombre “glaciares” es muy taquillero… entonces se le ha puesto “de glaciares”. Pero si la ley dijera “protegemos cuerpos de hielo que se mantienen por más de dos años en el terreno”, listo. Se acabaron los temas grises: hay hielo, lo protegemos. -¿Usted se considera a sí mismo “anti-minero”?

-No, para nada. Yo soy pro-ambiente y considero la minería una actividad industrial necesaria. Siempre lo he dicho. Por eso no comulgo con muchos grupos que dicen “no a la minería”, pero se suben a un auto que está hecho, la mitad, de productos mineros. Yo no soy para nada “anti-minero” por más que me hayan catalogado de tal. Y no podría serlo porque soy geólogo. Pero sí creo que se tiene que hacer un buen balance de los pros y los contras antes de empezar una mina. Si realmente la necesitamos o cómo vamos a hacer para usar eso para desarrollarnos. Los países desarrollados usaron la minería pero tenían un plan de reinversión.

-¿Es posible pensar en minería sin afectar glaciares? ¿Y grandes obras públicas como el túnel por Agua Negra?

-Sí, totalmente. De hecho el proyecto Pascua Lama que está tan complicado por la presencia de los cuerpos de hielo en la cobertura fue rediseñado con un rajo no interferente. Perdieron un 17 por ciento de las reservas de oro pero bueno, todo es posible.

Por supuesto esto es una puja. Los empresarios van a querer sacarle el jugo a la montaña lo que más puedan y ahí viene el rol del Estado y de las organizaciones no gubernamentales, a las cuales también pertenezco, de limitar un poco esto. Lo importante es que haya discusión abierta.

-¿Existe el traslado de glaciares o es ciencia ficción?

-Es perfectamente posible. Podés trasladar montañas. Lo prueba el rajo de la mina de la segunda región chilena que tiene casi 800 metros de profundidad y 2 kilómetros de largo. Hicieron una montaña al revés, un pozo impresionante. Lo mismo con los glaciares. El hielo pesa tres veces menos que la roca. Los camiones gigantes que tienen, les sobra capacidad. Como defensores de los regantes, cuando yo estaba en Chile, hicimos un proyecto para modificar el plan de movimiento de hielos que tenía la empresa.

-¿Y se conserva la potencialidad original del glaciar?

-No se sabe eso. Era una prueba y en ese caso la ley chilena establece compensaciones. En el análisis de esta rotura de hielo la empresa aceptaba que no iba a ser exitoso. Si lo era, mejor.

Pero ya tenían que pagar compensaciones por esa rotura. Tuvieron que construir un dique en altura. Nosotros dimos nuestro veredicto: se puede hacer pero no hay garantías de que funcione.

-¿Cuál es la peor hipótesis si se llegara a trabajar sin controles efectivos sobre los glaciares? ¿Cuál sería el peor daño posible en los glaciares?

-Como están dadas las cosas, los mayores problemas que yo veo en la explotación minera actual serían en el agua emergente, no en los glaciares. Lógicamente los glaciares van a ser afectados de una u otra manera. Se están quemando 220.000 litros de combustible diarios o algo así. Eso produce un calentamiento, sumado al polvo que se genera con el movimiento de máquinas y las explosiones. Ese polvo se asienta en los glaciares y aumenta el derretimiento y avanza el deterioro. Un posible escenario es que en esa zona los glaciares chicos desaparezcan y los grandes sean un poco contaminados, porque ese polvo no es muy bueno.

-¿Pero se puede morigerar con controles?

-Por lo menos podés saber lo que pasa. O sea, podés tomar muestras y ver qué tal es la evolución de la calidad del agua que viene de los glaciares. Nosotros propusimos una serie de controles, porque a veces suceden las catástrofes, suceden los accidentes y eso es imprevisible. Entonces nosotros en el área de Pascua Lama habíamos propuesto un sistema de cámaras conectadas on-line, para que cualquiera pudiera ver cómo se están llevando a cabo las operaciones. Ese es el problema que yo veo en Veladero.