Antofagasta has disputed claims it caused water pollution and drought near its Los Pelambres mine in Chile, as well as putting the local community in danger.
Anti-poverty group War on Want, which protested at the FTSE 100 copper miner’s annual meeting earlier this week, accused Antofagasta of a string of failings.
It cited complaints from locals that the Caimanes community has suffered both contamination and shortages of water due to the presence of the mine and its ‘tailings dam’, a huge deposit of mining by-products.
Contaminated: Antofagasta has rebuffed claims that the Los Pelambres copper mine pollutes the local waterAntofagasta said Chilean water authorities had uncovered no contamination in regular testing.
But local sources insisted that independent testing by the police and Dr Andrei Tchernitchin of the Chilean College of Physicians had revealed that water was not fit for human consumption. Antofagasta also said there was ‘no evidence’ the presence of its mine had any impact on the supply of water to the Caimanes community.
The firm, majority owned by Chile’s powerful Luksic family, has already won a Supreme Court case – after a decade-long battle – over accusations of its effect on the local water supply.
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War on Want warned that huge tremors, which are common in Chile, could cause the tailings dam to collapse, endangering the lives of hundreds of people living beneath it.
But Antofagasta insisted that the dam was built to the highest standards, pointing to Chilean regulators’ expertise in mining and earthquakes.