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One year after spilling enough cyanide solution to fill at least 40 percent of an Olympic-size swimming pool at the controversial Veladero mine in Argentina, Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold owned up Thursday to another cyanide leak at the same gold operation in the country’s mountainous and river-rich San Juan province.
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Barrick announced Thursday it had suspended work at the mine to address the leak, caused Sept. 8 by a damaged pipe carrying dilute cyanide solution used in gold processing. The company claimed a “small quantity” spilled and did not make contact with water sources. The impact of a sliding ice chunk is thought to have ruptured the pipe, according to preliminary company assessments.
Environmental campaigners raised alarm Thursday over the new spill, arguing that it offers yet another reason why the spill-prone Veladero mine should be shut down. The open-pit cyanide leaching mine, one of the largest gold mines in the world, is the target of a petition urging President Mauricio Macri to clamp down on Barrick and close Veladero once and for all.
“Impunity won once again,” Gonzalo Strano, campaigner with Greenpeace Argentina, said in a statement Thursday. “Macri should close Veladero like hundreds of thousands of people have asked since last year’s spill.”
“This new spill reconfirms that we cannot trust these kinds of companies that, with the complicity of governments in power, lie to and contaminate us,” Strano continued.
The government of San Juan ordered Veladero to suspend operations, but Greenpeace Argentina argued that the temporary solution is insufficient in the face of the damage that Barrick has caused and the ongoing threat the mine poses to regional glacier formations.
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The Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers echoed the criticism. “Barrick Gold has shown that it is in no condition to operate,” attorney Enrique Viale told Infobae. “Based on basic principles of environmental rights, the Veladero mine must be closed in a precautionary manner immediately.”
The latest leak comes after Barrick spilled over 280,000 gallons (1 million liters) of cyanide solution at Veladero on Sept. 12, 2015, in what has been described as the greatest mining disaster in Argentina’s history. Investigators found toxic heavy metals in five rivers surrounding the mine.
Environmentalists slammed the Toronto-based company for downplaying the severity of the spill and misreporting information related to the disaster. The San Juan area where the mine is located is home to a UNESCO-designated biological reserve and is protected by country’s national glaciers law.
The Veladero case is one in a host of environmental and human rights abuses suffered in Latin America at the hands of Canadian mining corporations. Barrick Gold is the world’s largest gold mining company.
According to the mining justice organization Protest Barrick, the global mining giant has a reputation for manipulating weak regulatory structures to “rob Indigenous people of their lands, destroy sensitive ecosystems and agricultural land, support brutal police and security operations, and sue anyone who tries to report on it.”
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