Loading ...Chile’s Supreme Court upheld an environmental order for a gold mine owned by Canada’s Kinross Gold Corp to close its water pumping wells, the environmental regulator said on Wednesday, bringing down the curtain on a long-running dispute that sparked the miners’ retreat from Chile.
The environmental watchdog, known locally as the SMA, initially ordered that the wells serving the Maricunga mine be shut down in 2016. The ruling was challenged by Kinross in Chile’s environmental tribunal and then in the country’s highest court.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday backed the original order, pointing to the “inadequate management of unforeseen environmental impacts on the Pantanillo-Ciénaga Redonda basin”, which is located in Chile’s northern Atacama desert.
Chile’s Supreme Court signals death knell of Kinross gold mine