Costa Rica - Government reactivates permissions for gold-mines
24-04-2008 Costa Rica prayedThe Government signed a decree that will allow the authorization of new projects of golden mining and other opencast minerals in Costa Rica. With the signature of this decree there gets up the moratorium that was current from June, 2002.
6 years ago, the president of that time Abel Pacheco (2002-2006), prohibited the golden development to avoid the chopping of forest and the use of poisonous substances like the cyanide, to extract the mineral.
Nevertheless the Government of Óscar Arias changed criterion.
Roberto Dobles, the minister of the Ambience and Energy, confirmed that the decree was already signed and that not only it raises the current moratorium from 2002, but it establishes a series of “safe-conducts“ to protect the ambience.
In a press release distributed yesterday, the Government of Costa Rica says that “he thinks that the activity can be realized any time it is provided with the environmental, social and economic viability”.
Dobles said that the control panel includes that the company guarantees the protection of the superficial and underground water resources.
Also, the decree supports that the State will watch the whole process of exploration and development of the projects up to his technical closing.
Between other safe-conducts, the decree asks the concessionaire for every tree felled in the mining development, to sow three.
At present, only there are current two big projects of development of opencast mining:
one in golden Mounts, Puntarenas
and other in Crucitas, San Carlos.
The first one was extracting gold from 2005, but it paralyzed operations in July, 2007, when an enormous slide provoked damages in the operation courtyards and broke the geomembrana that it was protecting to the soil of the poisonous substances of the process.
In case of Crucitas, the concessionary company, Vannessa Ventures, could not have exploited the mine for a legal discussion on the requisites that needs to operate.
Yesterday evening, on having found out about the decree, Franz Ulloa, president of the Association Costa Rican Chamber of the Mining Industry, said to be satisfied. “It is as to do holiday, because the mining industry is important for the production and the development of the country”, he added.
24-04-2008
