THE MINING EXPLOTACION IN THE SAN JUAN PROVINCE: VORACIOUS PLUNDERING By Alejandro Goransky With the salute of the

authorities, the multinacionals fit and destroy our natural resourceses In the the last ones two years, with the entrance in functioning of the mine of Veladero, in charge of the Canadian signature Barrick Gold Corp., San Juan passes to be a much desired capture of the big multinacional capitals in this title. The mining complex Veladero -Pascua Lama, put to a few 350 kilometers to the northwest of the city of San Juan, is in the high mountain, between 4.800 and 5.200 meters of height on the sea level, in an area that fond of the reserve of saint William, a where biosphere inhabits animals in danger of extinction as the vicuas, habitual captures of poachers. It will be exploited minerals as the gold, the silver, the copper, the iron and the mercury, and will be done against it established in the national and international legislation, since saint William is to depart of the world net of reserves of the biosphere of the Unesco, declared universal patrimony of humanity. The undertaking takes inverted in Veladero more than 1.350 of the correct weight millions, calculate that your gains will patrol the 20.000 millions of dollars in the next fifteen years, to leave you to San Juan in that period only 150 millions of dollars in concept of perquisites. The exploitation in the open air will cause the contamination of the earthes and the waters of the area: the knolls of mineral are watered with a |cianurada| solution, that favors the decanting of the gold and the silver, after the prosecution of the stone with the cyanide for this call method of lixiviation, the material is derived for collectors to big |piletones| that serv as you deposits. Even though those who go ahead with the process of exploitation secure that these structures will remain hermetically closed, impeding so all possible contamination, whom understands mining exploitations, as engineer Rodrguez Pardo, secure that the ninety by the hundreds of the deposits of this type it suffered a breakdown or filtered, by occasioning the contamination of the ground waters with the pourings of cyanide and arsenic. They will explode and will serve one hundred ninety thousand tons per day and foresees to him an useful life of the bed of at least fifteen years. The explosion in the open air to carry out the blowing ups involves big craters, with the consequent destruction of several squares kilometers of glaciers of high mountain, that it are those who decide of water to the province with the thaws of summer. will manipulate seven thousand two hundred kilograms of cyanide per day. The contamination can be expanded easily as a result of the prevailing winds in the area; nor what say of the seismic movements. BINACIONAL BED Easter licks is the other great bed that this undertaking wants to explode: it is of | binacional| character, since Easter is in the IV Regin of the side of chili, and licks is a little but northwards of Veladero, to 375 kilometers of the San Juan city. The foreseen inversions here surpass the 1.500 millions of dollars for a first stage, in the who the mine and the plant understand the 56 by the hundreds of inversion happiness and

the auxiliary substructure, a 44 by the hundreds remaining. The second and third stages of the exploitation will have an approximate cost to the 300 millions of dollars. In this case, the useful life of the mine is calculated in twenty years, with a method of exploitation in the open air, with a single slice, by prosecuting the mineral for dry grinding and method of recovery of the conventional mineral ( dike of tail ) to place remainders of the rock. fit marks off that, to weigh that the 87 by the hundreds of the mineral to exploit it finds in Easter, that is to say, of the Chilean side, all remainders of that exploitation, the polluting wastes, will remain of the Argentine side. The estimated production during the first five years is of 675.000 to 700.000 Spanish doubloons a year and 32 to 34 millions of ounces of silver a year. The estimated golden quantity in the bed is calculated in 16.900.000 ounces. The quotation of the ounce in the market of London patrols the 589 dollars the unit. Each ounce equals shortly afterwards more than 31 golden grams. This gives us an idea of the colossal business it begins this multinacional, sheltered in a permissive legislation, the "law" 24196 of the time of the president Menem. For them/it is all impressive gains, for us, it is the contamination of the already by itself very thrashed intercede local environment. Jchal already suffers in the drinking water and of irrigation a high concentration of boron and arsenic, that produces diverse illnesses in your population. This took to a political crisis in the northern department, with the renunciation to beginning of 2005 of Dunia Tez, who garrisoned the deliberative towncouncil, legislative organ of the |jachallero| municipality, whose intendant is Franklin Snchez, which is important a political reverse for this intendant and for the deputy "opponent" national Roberto Basualdo. Tez denounced the catastrophic effects that will have the mining exploitation in the |sanjuanino| north. Snchez by all means is negotiating with the mining Barrick the construction of an aqueduct to bring drinking water from the area of between rivers, northwards of the city of Jchal, work of an estimated cost of a million of dollars that is not foreseen in the provincial budget of the present year, because of which, if not does it the private enterprise who will be able to save to the |jachalleros|? In the same way, the undertaking has put to disposition twenty dollar millions, ten for Argentine and ten for chili in order that to the two patrons of the chain of mountains carry out to him works of substructure as the previously mentioned thing. In chili, moreover, as they are more jealous there with the safeguard of the environmental impact, it have formed up leave you in caution a buttom of sixty millions of dollars for the possible harms that the exploitation could produce. Already the national commission of halfback give atmosphere of that country it is pronounced against the "running" that really implies contradiction the destruction of three glaciers in the area of Easter. ADVANTAGES? But let us see someone of the awarded "advantages" to the undertaking for inverting here: the mining thing present a double fiscal deduction of expenses of exploration, that, by means of the "law" 24196, permits deduce you the hundred by the hundreds of the invert sum in deciding the |factibilidad| of a project of the calculation of the tax to the gains. Moreover, they have return of the IVA to the exploration for "law" 25429, secured fiscal and exchange stability for the 24196, acceleration amortization for that same law that permits amortize you machineries, substructure and vehicles in three years. It receive also

exemptions of tariffs and appraise customs for the law of mining inversions and deductions for expenses of conservation of the halfback it gives atmosphere ( they are permitted deduce of expenses the remediacin of damages that themselves cause ). Moreover, they are exempted of the tax to the gains in the utilities obtained for capitalization of the societies; exemption of the hundred by the hundreds of the tax to the minimum presumed gain, capitalization until a fifty by the hundreds of the valuations of the mining reserves. For if this is little, anticipated return and financing of the IVA, exemption of the contribution on the mining property; provincial and municipal burdens; exemption to the exports for Patagonian ports; exemption to the retentions for exports and of the tax to the check; the deduction of the hundred by the hundreds of the tax to the liquid combustibles; exemption of the transferences to the exterior of capital and gains; they must not liquidate divided, because are authorized to do not enter to the country a hundred by the hundreds of it produced for your exports and, the variety of strawberry of the dessert, the subsidy to the bedcloth of the electric mining line between Mendoza and San Juan, an adjudged work to the Spanish group Abengoa for 49 millions of dollars, but that really pay all argentines in our tickets of light, by assuming the province a thirty by the hundreds of the cost of the work that, by dint of is redundant, retrieve us in an item to speak of " buttom for the line of interconnection of 500 |kw|." how are you? This is single part of the benefits that obtains today for this awful plundering of our natural resourceses, for contaminating us, for devastating our economy. until when? Of ourself it depends -