Government officials have suspended operations at Barrick Gold’s Veladero gold mine in Argentina after another spill, this one just days before the one-year anniversary of the largest mining disaster in the country’s history at the site.
Details of the latest spill were released publicly by Barrick late Thursday, September 15, a week after the September 8 accident, as local Argentine media began to publish details.
Barrick reportedly notified local officials of the spill on the day it happened, but area communties were left in the dark until governor Sergio Unac held a press conference to announce suspension of activities at the mine “until it is determined that there is no risk to the population.”
The company says in an official statement that a pipe carrying “process solution [cyanide] in the heap leach area… was damaged when it was struck by a large block of ice that had rolled down the heap leach valley slope.”
The statement makes reference to “a small quantity of solution” spilling from the leach pad, which is located next to the Potrerillos River, but that “no solution from this damaged pipe reached any water diversion channels or watercourses.”
Uncertainty over the details of the incident brought protestors into the main square in San Juan shortly after Unac’s announcement. Police had to be called in after tires were set on fire by protesters.
“We don’t know for certain what is the impact of this latest spill,” said Gonzalo Strano of Greenpeace Argentina over Skype from San Juan. “The company says that the latest spill didn’t contaminate any of the rivers but it’s the same thing the company said one year ago.”
Strano is referring to the September 2015 spill at the mine in which some one million litres of diluted cyanide escaped into the nearby Potrerillos River. Barrick initially reported a leak of 224,000 litres. It later adjusted the figure two more times.
Why didn’t Barrick come out sooner to let the public know what was happening with the latest incident? Barrick’s Toronto-based senior vice president of communications, Andy Lloyd, says the company learned its lesson from 2015 spill.
“We don’t want to even provide any [details] until there is absolute certainty, until we are confident in them and not have to make a revision so people might think we have not been honest with them.”
According to Lloyd, the government’s decision to suspend operations was in response to “false rumours spread by activists groups in Jachal, that the mine had contaminated the rivers again with cyanide which is factually and completely untrue.”
Lloyd says there have been many visits to the mine in recent weeks and months by local community groups and third-party organizations to undertake their own water monitoring and testing, as well as study the environment, in an effort to build trust.
According to Lloyd, Barrick CEO Richard Williams will be flying to Argentina to inspect the mine himself.
“From a senior level of accountability, we are taking this extremely seriously,” he says.
Admittedly, Barrick has been trying to clean up its image abroad following last year’s departure of founder Peter Munk and a long list of controversies, most notably at operations in Papua New Guinea, Tanzania and Pascua Lama, which straddles the Chile and Argentina border high in the Andes.
Last June, the company reached a $140 million out-of-court settlement in a U.S. class action filed by former shareholders over its Pascual Lama operations. The suit alleged top Barrick executives misrepresented the company’s compliance with environmental regulations at the site, which resulted in suspension of operations by Chilean officials in 2009. Authorities halted construction indefinitely in 2013. A related class action filed by Canadian investors, is making its way through the courts here.
Strano says Barrick’s handling of the latest incident is testing the fragile faith built up with locals. He says Greenpeace Argentina are mobilizing, including with an online petition, to pressure the government into shutting down operations at Veladero completely.
Says local activist Gisela Carrizo of Assemblia Jacal no se Toca, a vocal opponent of the mine: “We can’t go on waiting for the next disaster to happen.”
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