Barrick Gold mining company is proposing to “relocate” 900,000 cubic meters of glacial ice in order to preserve the ecosystem around their Pascua Lama mining site in the Andes mountains.
In the first stages of Pascua Lama’s design and permit requests, Barrick failed to mention that their largest gold-mining venture ever would take place underneath several Andean glaciers on the Chilean-Argentine border. When the issue was brought up by local stakeholders and environmental groups after reviewing Barrick’s Environmental Impact Assessments that made no mention of the presence of glaciers, Barrick denied the facts, arguing that the glaciers did not meet the precise scientific definition of glaciers. Finally, the Canadian gold mining giant admitted the existence of glaciers at the site and now claims it can relocate them using bulldozers and trucks.
Barrick proposes to use a hydraulic tool to cut up the ice, then transport the glaciers to a nearby glacier site that will not be disturbed by its’ mining activity. The process will take four to six months. They assure that this result will not change the area’s water supply, which is largely dependent on glacier melt, and say they have been monitoring the flow of the resource since 1993. Barrick Gold suggests that it also may build barriers around the glacier to help it collect snow in the winter.
The Pascua Lama project is located in the Andes mountains, on the border between Argentina and Chile, and has been in the works for more than a decade. Barrick Gold expects reserves in the site of 17.8 million ounces of gold and 671 million ounces of silver. The site is expected to have a life of about 25 years and to require 5,500 workers to construct and 1,600 to operate. In its first phase Barrick Gold projects investment of 1.4 to 1.5 billion dollars. The mining process includes intensive procedures to extract the gold and silver ores, through the use of chemicals like sodium cyanide and sulfurous anhydrides.
Some estimate that nearly 60% of the glacier ice at the Pascua Lama site has already been destroyed by the prospecting phase, either to make access roads for the mining company, or due to dust buildup on the glaciers which darkens the ice and results in heat absorption and subsequently to glacier melting. Communities downstream on the Argentina side of the project claim crop yields have fallen drastically, some up to 80% since Barrick first started operations at its’ Veladero site, nearby Pascua Lama.
Barrick Gold is a Canadian mining company that has 26 operating mines across the globe, two projects in construction, and many other operations in exploration and preliminary stages.
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