Anti-Mining Demonstrators Blocking Peruvian Roads

Anti-Mining Demonstrators Blocking Peruvian Roads



 
May 2007 -   At midnight on May 2007 -  feasibility study done for the company shows a $1.44 
billion total project cost, and a project payback period in the first four 
years of the mine's 20 year operating period. 
A processing plant is planned next to the open pit mine, and the company 
plans to deposit tailings from the process plant in an adjacent valley. 
The copper concentrate would be transported to the port of Bayovar on the 
Pacific coast, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of Lima by truck or 
possibly by a pipeline yet to be built. 
A 175 kilometer (108 mile) power line would be constructed to link the 
project to Peru's national grid. The project would require the 
construction of 25 kilometers (15 miles) of new road connecting the 
project to the Pan American Highway. 
There is much opposition to the Rio Blanco project. For instance, the 
community of Yanta is suing Monterrico's Peruvian subsidiary Majaz for 
illegal invasion of its territority. 
Peru's Defensoria del Pueblo, or Ombudsman, Dra Eugenia Fernia Zegarra, 
has just issued an official complaint to the Minister of Energy and Mines 
against the national government's allowing mining activities by Majaz in 
the Yanta community. Among other points, she cited the failure by Majaz to 
obtain a two-thirds approval of the citizens of Yanta for the Rio Blanco 
mining project. 
International opposition is mobilizing, too. On April 3, some 100 
protesters gathered in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, in 
Monterrico Metals hometown, to protest against Rio Blanco. 
Peruvian community leader Nicanor Alvarado Carrasco predicted major 
protests and social disruption if Rio Blanco is allowed to proceed. 
"The Peruvian High Amazon region is not suited for mining," he said. "With 
its fragile ecosystem of cloud forests and paramos, and its organic 
agriculture in the valleys, copper mining at the source of important 
rivers could leave disastrous, long-lasting effects. The development of 
the Rio Blanco project risks a severe escalation of the mining conflict." 
This action was organized by the Belgian environmental group CATAPA and 
supported by several other Belgian, Peruvian and U.S. groups. 
The Rio Blanco project site is located in the Huancabamba region of 
northwestern Peru, a crucible of evolution. 
A road in the the Huancabamba region of northwestern Peru 
Here the more southern and ancient Central Andes meets the younger, more 
volcanically active Northern Andes, creating diverse climatic regimes and 
supporting a great variety of species, including many found nowhere else 
on Earth. 
In this area, there are 196 species of mammals, 25 of them considered 
threatened with extinction. They include such ecologically important 
species as the endangered mountain tapir, of which only a few hundred 
still survive in Peru and only a few thousand globally - all within the 
northern Andes. 
One of the world's great centers of bird origin and conservation, this 
region is inhabited by 439 species of birds, of which 35 are endemic. 
Nearly one-quarter of them are considered to be threatened with 
extinction. 
Some 150,000 hectares (580 square miles) of the most ecologically intact 
Andean forest and paramo in the Huancabamba region is proposed by the 
Andean Tapir Fund as the Cerro Negro Nature Sanctuary. 
This mid-elevation to high-elevation Huancabamba ecosystem is the 
headwaters for the Piura and the Chira rivers running to the west and for 
the Marañon and the Amazon rivers running to the east. 
Thousands of farming families depend upon this river water to cultivate 
orchards of carob bean, mango, guava, chirimoyo, lemons and avocados, as 
well as rice, organic coffee and cotton, and many other fruits and 
vegetables. 

Lemons from the orchards of Piura 
These waters replenish major dams such as the Poechos, filled by the Rio 
Quiroz, and the San Lorenzo, vital for agriculture and hydroelectric 
power. 
In another threat to this ecosystem, the Andean glaciers are disappearing 
at an alarming rate and most of Peru's mountain slopes and valleys used 
for agricultural production depend upon their steady influx of melted 
waters. 
The disappearance of these glaciers due to global warming is now predicted 
within decades. This will make the native forests and paramos of the 
Huancabamba region, as elsewhere, all the more important as water sources 
for future generations in this most fertile and agriculturally productive 
region of Peru. 
The Rio Blanco mining project planned by Monterrico Metals and Majaz in 
the Huancabamba's remnant ecosystem could prove to be the tipping point 
leading to a large-scale ecological unraveling and desertification in 
northwestern Peru, as many other mining projects will likely follow.  
  

       
      

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