Once more, Maria-Teresa Ruiz-Tagle, who was my professor of Environmental Economics at the Universidad de Chile, helped me to understand the main issues on that topic.

Two years ago I wrote about the exploitation of tar sands in Canada and the most incredible was the quantity of water needed. The same problem occurs in mining. Whereas a human consumes around 130 and 200 liters of water per day (to drink, cook, wash or to irrigate), this represents less than 1,5% of a mining company’s consumption. And it seems that this high consumption is not decreasing, as we can see on the graphics below.

“Projections of water demand for total production of copper in Chile 2009-2020” (COCHILCO is the Chilean Commission of Copper)

But the high consumption of water is not only a problem in itself, it also sets an issue with local communities that need drinkable water and water for the farming sector. Moreover, many zones of the north of Chile are mining ones and the majority of foreign investments in this industry are concentrated over there. This zone is the Atacama desert, which is the most arid desert in the world, so the demand of water is obviously higher than the supply. For these reasons, it is a legal obligation for mining companies to get water rights, that are scarce and expensive.

Thus, mining companies have to find new ways to get water. Escondida, a company exploiting a mine located in the Atacama desert (one of the biggest of Chile), is trying to use less and less water and to recycle it as much as possible. But there is still a certain amount that is lost in the recycling process. So they decided to build a plant that removes the salt from the sea water to pump this water up to the mine. They committed to take a certain proportion of water from the sea. Besides, a great part of the air pollution comes from dust of moving trucks. So, in Escondida, the water that is not usable anymore is used to wet the soil and keep the dust down. It’s “something super simple”, as says Maria-Teresa. BhP Billiton, a big mining company that invested in Escondida, even thought about generating energy with waterfalls, water coming from the sea. That shows that companies have to be creative.

The Escondida mine

The second main environmental issue in the exploitation of copper (and other minerals) in Chile is the management of material removed to dig the mine. Huge holes are created, and they will last forever. Besides, toxic releases have to be separated from non-toxic ones. Big companies comply quite well with this obligation of separation but small companies are dirtier and are more unclear about how much toxic waste they release in the environment.

Generally-speaking, big companies are much more willing to commit to use less water, to manage responsibly toxic waste or, in general, to be responsible. As international companies, they have to look after their transnational reputation and to follow certain protocols to be accepted in countries with strict regulation, like in Europe. For example, in Chile, there is a regulation for air pollution levels in cities but not for “campamentos” (=workers living near the mines). Escondida made the commitment to fulfill the same regulation for campamentos as for cities. They declared their willingness and measured the progress, even though it’s not a legal requirement. The global market is even pushing international companies to publish Environmental/Sustainability reports.

On the other hand, small and middle-sized companies make few commitments and the Chilean authorities are not present enough to enforce the law. According to Maria-Teresa, there is not enough money spent by the regulator to run the enforcement : “I don’t think there is enough enforcement in this country generally speaking, and one of the reasons is the lack of resources”.

Yet, transnational companies stay “on the top” to create big scandals. Barrick Gold, a huge Canadian mining company, was exploiting the mine of Pascua-Lama, an open-pit mine located in the Andes. The company had so many environmental issues with local communities that, in the end, they dug a hole all the way to Argentina to process the copper so that the minerals are treated and sold from Argentina. The Chilean regulator fined this company because it had mixed water with residuals (so it didn’t fulfill the law), damaging local communities for drinkable water. The mine has been temporary closed to find a solution. In 2013, the conflict between local communities and Barrick Gold continued on court and the Chilean authority asked to the company to meet environmental standards on its new project of construction that straddles the Chile-Argentina border until the company builds infrastructure to prevent water pollution.

The green legislation make progresses... slowly.

This line of modest optimism will be my conclusion. Of course I thank my favorite chilean experts Rodrigo and Maria-Teresa, and you, dear readers. Any comments (positive, negative, neutral) are more than welcome. I hope I’ll have new opportunities in the future to write on this blog.

See you soon, Be green, Ben