The Swedish mining multinational Boliden will not have to pay the 89 million for cleaning up the spill in Aznalcóllar (Seville), considered the second toxic spill in volume in Spain after the ship prestige and that he stayed at the gates of Doñana. The Junta de Andalucía claimed to the court that the company had to pay for the restoration work after the rupture of the mining waste pond and the serious contamination that it produced, but the Court of First Instance 11 of Seville has dismissed its demand this Friday.
“It has not been possible to identify (…) the existence of a specific coverage that would insure the risk whose cost has been assumed by the plaintiff [la Junta], that is, the obligation to restore things to the state they were in at the time they were affected by the activity”, reads the sentence handed down by magistrate José Manuel Martínez, before which an appeal is possible. It is foreseeable that the legal dispute will end in the Supreme Court within several years, since the Board has advanced that it will appeal the ruling.
The magistrate argues that the demand of the Board was sustained in order to be successful in article 81 of the Mining Law, Royal Decree 2994/1982, article 174 of the Union Treaty and article 15 of the waste directive. However, he considers that “the reimbursement action” of the 89 million has no legal basis and cannot “legally support the action brought,” says the judge in reference to the economic claim of the Andalusian Government. The sentence considers that the Mining Law does not oblige Boliden to restore the environment as it was before the accident, but that there would only be room for an “action for damages” to compensate the damages caused by the mining activity, but this action was not filed by the Board. The magistrate rejects that the green book of the European Commission on reparation of ecological damage or the white book on environmental responsibility or the resolution of the European Parliament of June 1, 1998 can serve as “legal support” for the claim.
Among other arguments, the Board had alleged during the oral hearing that Boliden had received “certain sums from insurance companies as a result of the raft breaking”, but it was not enough to tip the balance in its favor. On the opposite sidewalk, the Swedish mining company argued before the judge that it had assumed responsibility for cleaning up the first section of the contaminated area, which it considered sufficient: “This company expressed its commitment to advance the amount of 100 million pesetas [600.000 euros] by section so that they can be subcontracted to other companies”, alleged the multinational, advised by the Uría y Menéndez law firm.
The trial was held this month of July in four sessions, just 25 years after the ecological disaster, which occurred in the spring of 1998. In the oral hearing, the technicians and leaders of the Junta testified as witnesses to explain what the work of cleaning and restoration of the Guadiamar riverbed, as well as those responsible for Boliden, who assure that some 40 million were finally spent on cleaning, despite the fact that their initial provision was 600,000 euros. A few years after the accident, the Swedish multinational closed its subsidiary companies in Spain and left the country. The former Ministry of the Environment won an administrative dispute in the Supreme Court for Boliden to pay the 43 million spent on cleaning up toxic sludge, but never collected it due to the insolvency of the Spanish subsidiary.
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The spokesman for the Board and Minister of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, has advanced this Friday that the regional Executive will appeal the sentence: “We are facing very bad news for Andalusia and for the environment (… .). The Andalusian Government defends the principle that the polluter pays (…). It is a case in which there are no precedents either in jurisprudence or in doctrine, and which is part of the legal interpretation of the regulatory framework applicable 25 years ago, which we certainly do not share.”
The Aznalcóllar mine spill expelled six million cubic meters of toxic sludge into the Guadiamar riverbed, causing the death of thousands of fish and affecting an area of 4,634 hectares with much land that had to stop being cultivated due to the presence of heavy metals, the remains of which still remain today. The fast gray river of mining waste remained at the gates of Doñana after traveling 62 kilometers -with a width between 500 meters and one kilometer-, thanks to the fact that the technicians improvised several dams to prevent disaster for the fauna and flora was even bigger.
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