Permits granted for the construction of an industrial mining project in northern Colombia are raising concerns among residents and conservationists, who say they might lose their food and drinking water to unregulated pollution, causing them to relocate to other parts of the country. Canadian mining company Cordoba Minerals won a construction permit last month for the $420.4 million Alacrán mining project, which will extract gold, silver and copper by early next year. While the deal would make it one of the biggest mines in the country, with significant economic benefits, the project could also increase environmental damage and uproot communities in an area that already has a long list of problems, critics say. “El Alacrán is a populated center where more than 300 families have lived all their lives,” Juan Velásquez Ruiz, a resident who’s been mining there for decades, told Mongabay. “We want the government to intervene and really support us. We don’t have any support.” Alacrán mine, located in Puerto Libertador, in the Córdoba department, is part of a 30-year mining title on around 22,000 hectares (54,363 acres). The larger land package where Alacrán mine is located, called San Matias, is still mostly in the exploration phase, according to the company. The operation is expected to extract 417,300 tons of copper, 724,500 ounces of gold and 5,930,000 ounces of silver annually from an open pit. It’s being developed jointly with the Chinese JCHX Mining Management Co. The area has abundant deposits of nickel, gold, coal, copper, silver, platinum…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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