The Unified Environmental Authorisation (AAU) granted by the Andalusian Government on 11 July to the mining company Los Frailes, which was the essential prior step to give the green light to the reopening of the Aznalcóllar mine, has been suspended due to legal imperative. This has been confirmed by the Ministry of the Environment, responsible for processing this administrative act, which has recognised in a statement that this suspension has been due to the fact that the legal period of one month to respond to the appeal filed by Ecologists in Action against the AAU has passed, without the administration having responded to the letter.
“It is important to note that, in accordance with current regulations, one month having passed since the receipt of the appeal, the AAU is automatically suspended, as stipulated in the legal framework,” the Department of the Environment acknowledges in its statement, although it then stresses that “this suspension is temporary and does not imply a definitive cancellation of the Unified Environmental Authorization. Once the appeal is duly evaluated and resolved by the competent services, the procedure will be as determined by the legal services of the Department.” The environmentalists thus gain time and draw attention to their offensive to stop the reopening of the mining complex.
The project for the exploitation of the new Aznalcóllar mine has become a point of almost permanent friction between environmental groups, who warn that the discharges from the new site will irreversibly contaminate the Guadalquivir estuary, and the Junta de Andalucía, which maintains that it has all the guarantees. This was made clear on July 11, when it signed the AAU.
This procedure is essential for the resolution of the final authorization, which depends on the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mines and includes a public hearing process. The Andalusian administration, as specified in July by the Minister of Mines Jorge Paradela, and the then Minister of Environment, Ramón Fernández Pacheco (replaced at the end of July by Catalina García), expected to have this procedure completed by the end of the last quarter of this year, but this suspension will extend these deadlines. The Ministry has three months from August 12, when Ecologistas en Acción filed the appeal, to respond, a period in which the execution of the AAU remains in effect. stand byThe NGO has confirmed to this newspaper that it also plans to appeal to the courts against the decision on its appeal filed by the Junta.
In the 20-page document to which this newspaper has had access, Ecologistas en Acción argues that the resolution is null and void because it does not include the full content of the Environmental Impact Statement and draws attention to how substantial modifications have been made in that document to the amount of authorized discharge that have not been submitted to public information – from 2.6 to 4 tons per year during the 17-year operational phase. It also criticizes that the obligation to carry out a strategic environmental assessment in all municipal areas has not been fulfilled and that an adequate Environmental Impact Assessment of the toxic discharge has not been carried out throughout the entire protected area of the lower Guadalquivir, which would affect the Doñana National Park, and would have an impact on the rice fields and aquaculture in the area. “This discharge would be 17.52 billion litres in the first 18 months of the pre-operational phase and 68,000 litres of toxic waste during the 17 years of operation,” warns Isidoro Albarreal, head of Mines at Ecologistas en Acción.
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In their appeal, the environmentalists ask the Department of the Environment to also take into account a series of scientific reports that address the stability project for the Aznalcóllar mine – which is currently accumulating the toxic waste that overflowed when the dam broke in 1998 – and whose treatment in the new mining project they question, and others carried out by different institutes and independent organisations in the areas of ecology, environmental safety, fluid dynamics in estuaries and food safety.
“An important aspect is the failure to comply with the Doñana Law. The participation council is obliged to provide information, and they have not done so,” says Albarreal regarding another series of specific statements that the Ministry is requesting in its appeal and which, in addition to the Participation Council, include the CSIC Biological Station or UNESCO.
Pre-mine reopening phase
This suspension, while the Board presents its response, implies that the Department of the Environment could not execute the AAU. In its letter, Ecologistas en Acción requests that the General Directorate of Mines also be notified to stop the processing of the authorization of the exploitation project, the last step to start the pre-opening phase of the mine, which is expected to last three years. The project includes the construction of a treatment plant and a tunnel to transport the water, in addition to the underground galleries of the mine – which will last 18 months – to continue with the emptying of the water stored in the Los Frailes mine, where the mine will be located, and the extraction of part of the water from the neighbouring Aznalcóllar mine, which is the one with the greatest contaminating waste. From here, at the end of 2027 or beginning of 2028, mining activity as such would begin for the next 17 years for the extraction of copper, zinc and lead, especially.
Both the Andalusian Government and the company that has the exploitation concession insist on disassociating this project from the 1998 mine and the environmental risks that caused that disaster. “The 1998 mine has nothing to do with it,” said the then Environment Minister, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, in July. This mine, they stress, is underground and does not have ponds where waste is deposited, unlike the one that caused the toxic catastrophe, which was open-air.
Aware of the frontal opposition of environmentalists to the project, the Andalusian administration has focused on the security parameters of the new complex, also highlighting the opportunity for the economic revitalization of an area that has been constantly losing population since the cut overflowed 26 years ago. The project involves a private investment of 450 million euros – of which 100 million are planned for environmental assets, such as the treatment plant – and will create 2,000 direct and indirect jobs during the 20-year duration of the concession and is aligned with the commitment to mining of the government of the popular Juan Manuel Moreno.
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