This morning article with Charts in La Prensa from environmentalists attacking open pit mining in Panama. www.Prensa.com
Don't think it will go anywhere since government will receive a lot of money for the treasury from Inmet&Petaquilla, but this will cause a lot of talk while ANAM reviews the impact study from Petaquilla to expand the pit and Inmet's 14,000 page application to start work.
Google translation sort of sucks, but you can get the drift:
Anam no technicians to oversee activity
Mining evidence institutional weakness
Environmentalists criticize the mining company is paying the technicians who evaluate their environmental impact study. Today is the deadline for submitting comments to the document.
Aleida C. Samaniego
ansamaniego@prensa.com
The support the current administration has given mining open-pit copper and gold, has highlighted the institutional weakness to control an activity considered as the most polluting of the planet.
The latest example is the direct recruitment made by the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) to the company Austral Risk Consulting, Inc. to assess the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the company Minera Panama, which aims to extract copper Coclesito province Columbus.
The cost of the evaluation of the EIA is $ 802 000 500 and will be assumed by Minera Panama SA, which could become a problem of conflict of interest and "leave no doubt about the rigor of the analysis" as saying environmental groups like the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) or the Environmental Advocacy Center (CIAM).
According to the timetable of the evaluation process, today is the deadline to submit comments to the EIA "with nearly 15 thousand pages," he protested Tania Arosemena, the CIAM.
In 2007, major environmental organizations petitioned the then president, Martin Torrijos, a moratorium on open pit mining, to determine whether the country has the technical and environmental conditions for the development of this sector. No answer.
SEE Controversial environmental study
AI
