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Re: [SANET-MG] Please Help if you can.



Hi Wtze and Kim.
I am enclosing below an article on the project undertaken by Barrick Gold. I also included an article on the Indonesian Busang gold project that turned out to be a huge fraud. I understand that many small investors lost everything but Barrick did not lose on the fraud. cheers,joe
Barrick Gold Strikes Opposition in South America
by Glenn Walker, Special to CorpWatch
June 20th, 2005

“Barrick! Listen! Chile will not surrender!, No to Pascua Lama!,” roared a crowd of protestors as they paraded through the streets of Santiago, Chile. The crowd was addressing Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold, in response to the company's proposed bi-national “Pascua Lama” open-pit mine on the border of Chile and Argentina.

In what has so far been the climax of a campaign that is quickly gaining momentum, the protestors gathered on June 4th in both Santiago, Chile's capital city, and in the northern city of Vallenar, near the Pascua Lama site. Each protest drew an estimated 2,000 people in a lively atmosphere of carnival and traditional dance and ritual. The groups condemned Barrick Gold’s plans as greedy, heavy-handed, and called the proposed mine an environmental and social nightmare, shouting, “We are not a North American colony!”

Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational already notorious for its dealings in North America, Australia and Africa, plans to extract an estimated 500,000 kilograms of gold (along with silver, copper and mercury) from the site over a 20 year period. Before doing so, however, the company will relocate significant parts of the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza, three giant Andean glaciers. Barrick hopes to transfer the three glaciers to an area with similar surface characteristics and elevation by merging the three into the larger Guanaco glacier.

The anticipated environmental impact, coupled with the removal of a major source of water for surrounding communities, has local Chileans up in arms. But Barrick Gold appears un-phased by the opposition. After all, Pascua Lama is one of the largest foreign investments in Chile in recent years, totaling US$1.5 billion.

As with many gold mines, the Pasuca Lama mine would employ cyanide leaching for on-site processing of the ore. Cyanide is a chemical compound which, even in very small quantities, is extremely toxic to humans and other life forms. If leaked from a mine site or spilt during transportation, it can quickly cause massive toxicity problems for an entire ecosystem, while mobilizing other persistent and toxic heavy metals, as well.

For this reason the people of the Huasco Valley – the area where the headwaters of the mine site flow – are extremely anxious about the risk of poisoning their water source, along with the significant problem of large dust plumes released by mining activity.

“The air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we cultivate have more value than the gold coveted by multinationals,” wrote the people of the Huasco valley and a number of environmentalists recently in a letter to the Chilean president that pleaded for a halt to the project.

Barrick's plans to “relocate” three glaciers – 816,000 cubic meters of ice – by means of bulldozers and controlled blasting, is seen by mine-opponents as symbolic of the company's utter insensitivity to the environment. As headwaters for a water basin in an arid region receiving very little rainfall, many opponents are gravely concerned for the ice. They say the mechanical action involved in moving the glaciers will irreversibly melt much of it, jeopardising a delicate ecological balance further downstream.

“A glacier isn’t just a chunk of ice you can pick up and move,” says Lucio Cuenco, from Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA). “It’s part of a water basin, and if you move it, you’ll disrupt that ecosystem”.

The three glaciers also constitute a precious source of environmental knowledge. Ice is a natural preservative and glaciers this large undoubtedly carry information on the flora and fauna of the area and the history of many thousands of years of the South Andes.

There are also severe occupational health and safety issues with the mine. According to Cesar Padilla, also of OLCA, several deaths have already been reported as part of the initial construction.

Nataneal Vivanco, an organic farmer from the Huasco Valley, also voices deep worries about the safety of the mine workers.

“They say they are a “responsible” company but I don’t know to what level because right now, although they haven’t even started to work fully, there’s been 15 deaths,” Vivanco says.

Vivanco’s claim is echoed by activist groups campaigning against the mine, who allege that at least 15 workers have been lost. But details of exactly how the deaths occurred are unclear and the municipal councillor who is said to have an official list of the deaths was unavailable for comment.

Barrick Gold did not wish to comment on the issue to CorpWatch, but has consistently denied the potential scale of their effect on the Huasco Valley and its inhabitants. They maintain that the project is good for the region in that it will generate thousands of local jobs, that safety standards are high, and that the environmental effects of the mine are negligible.

“The impact on water quantity is minimal, the impact of water is none,” claimed Vince Borg, Barrick Gold’s vice president of communications last month in a statement to the Dow Jones Newswire.

“We're not surprised at all by a number of activists coming out and offering their view and distorting some facts rather than focusing on reality,” he added.

Despite the company's claims, the regional environmental commission CONEMA, in a recent report, has expressed concern that the company has shown little consideration for the possibility of down-stream pollution and that there is “inconsistency” in their related figures.

The CONEMA report has called for the glacial relocation plans to be scrapped and for the mine to instead be downsized or established underground so as to lessen potential environmental impacts. Barrick Gold is still compiling a response.

In the meantime, in an effort to stymie the growing opposition to the project, Barrick Gold has released a major TV ad campaign championing “responsible mining.” The company has also offered US$10 million to fund local educational and cultural community projects.

The fund has been dismissed as an attempt to buy silence by mine-opponents who claim the money offered is miniscule in comparison to the profits that will be made and the damage that will be done.

Indeed, as the world’s second biggest gold producer with 13 major mine operations worldwide, and another five in development, Barrick Gold is certainly not short on cash. What’s more, they are not required under Chilean law to pay taxes on their takings and have so far avoided having to pay a bond as insurance if something were to go terribly wrong.

These fierce accusations of corporate irresponsibility and greed are certainly not the first the massive mining company has had to handle. In the past they have been accused of burying alive 50 miners in Tanzania (through a company they now own), of playing a heavy-handed role in attempting to silence opposition through expensive libel cases, and of blatantly disregarding community and environmental concerns all over, from the US, to Latin America, Africa and Australia.

George W Bush Sr. also appears in the long list of grievances about the company. From 1995 to 1999 he was the "Honorary Chairman" of Barrick's "International Advisory Board," during which time he was said to have forced laws favourable to the company.

Barrick Gold expects to have full approval for their Pascua Lama project by the end of the year. Meanwhile opposition continues to swell.

Nataneal Vivanco says that on top of the safety problems and potential contamination to water (which he worries could ruin his chance at organic certification), Barrick's presence has caused another kind of contamination.

“The conflict that we are having -- one against the other, those in favor and those against the mine -- is a type of contamination, a social contamination."
BARRICK AND BRE-X AGREE ON PLAN FOR BUSANG GOLD

Article Tools Sponsored By
Published: December 17, 1996 ny times

The fate of one of the world's most glittering gold finds landed back in the hands of the Indonesian Government yesterday, after two Canadian mining concerns said they had finally agreed on a plan of joint development. The Barrick Gold Corporation and Bre-X Minerals Ltd. ended weeks of speculation about whether they could work together when they submitted a plan to develop the huge Busang deposit, which has at least 57 million ounces of gold. Neither company would disclose the terms or structure of the proposed deal. In November, the Indonesian Government told the companies to form a joint venture, with Barrick gaining 75 percent and Bre-X keeping 25 percent. The Government twice extended their deadline.
wdl wrote:
This is not a hoax. I heard about this project months ago from a Chilean
guy who lives here in amsterdam.

wytze





Op wo, 10-05-2006 te 07:38 -0500, schreef Garth & Kim Travis:
Greetings,
The following came in on my aquaponics list this morning.  I can find
no reference to this issue on Snopes.com, so I am passing this along.
If this is a hoax, please let me know.  If it isn't, please help.
Bright Blessings,
Kim




Dear friends who care about our earth. Judge for yourself if you want to take action. In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it. Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they provide the second largest source of income for the area. Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip.

The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold. The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is George Bush Senior. The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process. Every last gramme of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior. Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from international justice. The world must know what is happening in Chile. The only place to start changing the world is from here. We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the following way. Please copy this text, paste it into a new email adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book. Please will the 100th person to receive and sign the petition send it to noapascualama@yahoo.ca to be forwarded to the Chilean government.


No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier. We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama project to p! rotect the whole of 3 glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the quality of the agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole population of the region.

Signature, City, Country



1) Katharine Proudfoot, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK 2) Laura Cole, London, UK 3) David Platt, London, UK 4) Diane Platt, Manchester, UK 5) Tanya Corker, Manchester, UK 6) Claire Colvine, Liverpool, UK. 7) Charles Williams, Liverpool, UK 8) Mary Williams, Manchester, UK 9)Sarah Wettenhall, Melbourne, Australia 10] Mary Moore, Healesville, Australia 11) Jocelyn Harvey, Madrid, Spain 12) Michelle Campbell, Vancouver, Canada 13) Lynn Irving, Westport, NZ 14) Glenn Irving, Westport, NZ 15) Kate Dermer, Raglan, NZ 16) Joanna McKay, Raglan, NZ 17). Anna Bartlett, palma, spain. 18) Hamish Moeller, Taupo, NZ ! 19) andreas eggmann, chamonix, france 20)jackie ke eble, Mount Maunganui, NZ. 21)Simon Fritchley, Mount Maunganui, NZ. 22)Abi Cross, Plymouth, UK 23) Kirsteen Ruffell, London UK 24) Julian Drummond, Isle of Wight, UK
25) Serena Gower-Johnson, Isle of Wight, UK
26) Angela Gower-Johnson, Isle of Wight, UK
27) Jesuriel Senechal, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA 28) Alexander Phelps, Miami Beach, FL, USA
29) Jana Soukup-Razga, Mt.Elphinstone, BC, CANADA

30) Kristina Keaveney, Sechelt, BC, CANADA

31) Bernard Wera, Roberts Creek, B.C. Canada

32) Kim Travis, Bedias, TX., USA
 

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