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Category: OceanaGold
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Published: Tuesday, 30 March 2021 12:44
The State
Sammy
A gold mine that is seeking to expand in Lancaster County has again drawn state scrutiny for violating environmental rules, this time over excessive discharges of cyanide, a potentially deadly chemical used in the mining process.
The Haile Gold Mine, which stands to produce more than $2 billion in gold and silver from the mine expansion, has broken a federal wastewater law twice since late 2020 at the site between Columbia and Charlotte, state and federal records show.
The 2020 wastewater discharge violations, disclosed this week by the Department of Health and Environmental Control, are the latest in a series of environmental troubles to surface about the mining operation.
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Category: Mining prohibition El Salvador
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Published: Sunday, 28 March 2021 01:45
FPIF
Robin Broad, John Cavanagh
From West Texas to Jackson, Mississippi, tens of millions of people struggled through late winter storms that froze pipes, broke water mains, and cut off electricity. They froze without showers, toilets, or washing machines — let alone drinking water — for days or even weeks.
The irony that Texas, the state built on fossil fuels, was completely unprepared for extreme weather disasters shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
Fossil fuel and utility firms have long plied state officials with money. In turn, officials failed to regulate utilities, weatherize their grid, or create programs to weatherize homes — much less upgrade the state’s decaying water infrastructure.
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Category: Mining prohibition El Salvador
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Published: Monday, 22 March 2021 07:51
The World
Joyce
A new book describes how environmental activists in El Salvador brought conservatives and progressives together to institute a nationwide ban on metal mining in 2017.
The World’s Marco Werman spoke with attorney Luis Parada, who led El Salvador’s defense team in a mining lawsuit at the World Bank, and Robin Broad, a co-author of the book, "The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country from Corporate Greed."
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Category: Mining and Human Rights
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Published: Sunday, 14 March 2021 16:27
Guapinol Resiste
On February 9, 2021, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention sent a strong and clear message to Honduras: Immediately release the eight imprisoned Guapinol defenders.
In its resolution 85/2020, the Working Group stressed that there is no legal reason for the use of pre-trial detention in the case of defenders José Daniel Márquez Márquez, Kelvin Alejandro Romero MartÃnez, José Abelino Cedillo, Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, OrbÃn Nahúm Hernández, Arnold Javier Alemán, Ewer Alexander Cedillo Cruz and JeremÃas MartÃnez DÃaz and emphasized that the State is punishing them for being environmental defenders and for exercising their legitimate rights. Furthermore, it noted that there is no reason to prosecute them in the first place. The Working Group emphasized that they should be released and redressed and that those responsible for the illegal detention should be investigated.
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Category: OceanaGold
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Published: Saturday, 13 March 2021 12:41
Otago Daily
Hamish Maclean
OceanaGold has welcomed investigations under way to rule out all possible sources of lead in an Otago community’s water supply even after the mining company resurfaced on a list of possible suspects this week.
A no-drink notice was issued for Waikouaiti, Hawksbury and Karitane on February 2 after it was revealed high lead levels had been recorded in the water supply.
When the Dunedin City Council said this week it was replacing several kilometres of old pipes in the area at a cost of about $6million, council Three Waters group manager Tom Dyer included OceanaGold’s Macraes mine in a list of possible contamination sources suggested by the community that were still being considered.
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Category: Mining and Human Rights
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Published: Tuesday, 02 March 2021 16:31
CNCA
Today the Federal Court of Canada hears a case alleging that the Canadian government is improperly withholding information about its diplomatic interventions on behalf of a Canadian company accused of human rights abuse at its mine in Guatemala.
The lawsuit, filed by Shin Imai, York University law professor and co-founder of the Justice & Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP), is supported by several civil society organizations. It asks the court to order Global Affairs Canada to remove the redactions on 20 pages of documents the department disclosed in response to an access-to-information request.
Hidden in those documents are details about Canadian officials’ communications with Goldcorp, the Guatemalan government and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) after the commission called for Goldcorp’s Marlin mine to be shut down in 2010. The commission made the unprecedented request in response to evidence that Indigenous communities had not been consulted about the mine and concerns that its operations were contaminating their water resources.
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