- In 2018, Argentina charged the former director of the country’s glacier research institute and three former environment secretaries with abuse of authority that allegedly led to a toxic cyanide spill at a gold mine in the country’s San Juan province.
- Seven years later, the four officials have not yet been tried and officials have not provided an explanation for the delay.
- Fellow scientists came to the director’s defense at the time, saying he followed international standards in his work and was being scapegoated even as the mine owner, Canadian company Barrick Gold, evaded responsibility.
- Meanwhile, affected community members still live with the effects of the spill that contaminated their water sources and affected biodiversity, livestock and agricultural production.
This is the first of a three-part series on underreported issues involving Canadian mining companies and Indigenous peoples or local communities. Read part two here.
Seven years after an environmental administrator and three secretaries of the environment were charged with negligence that resulted in a toxic cyanide spill at Canadian miner Barrick Gold’s Veladero gold mine in Argentina, the case has still not gone to trial.
“Everything has been in place since 2018 for the oral and public trial,” Domingo Jofré, a member of Jáchal no se Toca, the NGO that filed the lawsuit, told Mongabay by phone. “But it remains dormant in some federal judge’s drawer.” One of the four officials awaiting trial told Mongabay they haven’t received a court date or an explanation for the delay.
The first spill at the Veladero mine in 2015 dumped a million liters (264,000 gallons) of cyanide solution into nearby rivers in the province of San Juan. More spills occurred in 2016 and 2017 and are still under investigation. Barrick Gold, the second-largest gold miner in the world, owns two major open-pit mines in the province: Veladero and Pascua-Lama. The Veladero mine has been co-owned with Chinese company Shandong Gold since 2017.
In November 2017, Ricardo Villalba, the former director of IANIGLA, the national institute for glacier research, and former environment secretaries Omar Judis, Sergio Lorusso and Juan José Mussi were indicted for failing to oversee the National Glacier Inventory (NGI). According to court documents, many ice bodies that exist in the Lama-Veladero area, where Barrick Gold’s mine is located, were never inventoried, meaning they were never protected. If the inventory was done properly, the Veladero mine would have never been allowed to operate and the cyanide spills would have been avoided, plaintiffs said.
They also tried to take the company to court, but the judge never processed the case, their lawyer told Mongabay.
When Villalba faced the charges seven years ago, fellow scientists came to his defense, saying he was being scapegoated while the company evaded responsibility. In a past letter, a coalition of international scientists said Villalba and his team followed “state of the art international standards” in their inventory.
Meanwhile, residents say they’re concerned about the impact of the spills on livestock and agricultural production, as well as the impact of mining operations on Andean glacial and periglacial deposits. These ice bodies are crucial water resources for millions of people, and mining can accelerate the retreat and thinning of the ice bodies and cause permafrost to degrade.
A spokesperson for Barrick Gold told Mongabay that environmental monitoring carried out after the September 2015 incident concluded the incident had caused no harm to people or the environment. During the 2016 and 2017 incidents, no cyanide solution left the Veladero Valley leaching facility, the spokesperson added.
“We therefore refute any allegation that ‘contamination is present’ or the insinuation that persons ‘are unable to drink from water sources’ due to mining activities or Veladero which is not supported by the facts,” they said.
A United Nations report released shortly after the 2015 incident said the cyanide spill impacted the area near the Veladero mine, such as the Potrerillos River and part of the Taguas River, but not the Blanco, La Palca or Jáchal rivers downstream from the mine. However, the “presence of cyanide compounds and metal concentrations suggests a possible risk of leachability and transport of heavy metals through water bodies,” which could have a delayed effect on downstream water bodies, it said.
The U.N. concluded at the time that although the spill did not endanger human life, it did cause disturbances to tiny life-forms such as phytoplankton and zooplankton, which form the basis of the aquatic food chain.
Studies have shown that cyanide and heavy metals can enter the food chain through the consumption of plants and animal species that absorb or digest the toxins. This can pose a critical threat to human health and ecosystems, as cyanide and other chemical compounds accumulate the further they go up the food chain.
IANIGLA and the mining ministry didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time this story was published. The environment ministry has been relegated under President Javier Milei to an undersecretariat of the Ministry of the Interior; it also didn’t respond to request for comment.
Barrick Gold told Mongabay “there is no legal or factual basis to assert that Veladero contravenes Argentina’s glacier protection framework.”
‘Abuse of authority’
The mine is located within San Guillermo Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-listed site that’s home to the largest population of guanacos (Lama guanicoe) and vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) in Argentina. Other species, such as lesser rheas (Pterocnemia pennata), pumas (Puma concolor) and endangered Andean cats (Leopardus jacobita), also depend on the area’s water resources.
In 2017, local judge Sebastián Casanello subpoenaed Villalba and the three former environment secretaries for “abuse of authority,” alleging they failed to correctly inventory the country’s glaciers as listed in the provisions of the Law of Minimum Budgets for the Preservation of Glaciers and the Periglacial Environment and the principles enshrined in the General Environmental Law.
To protect these ice bodies, which include glaciers and periglacial environments, it’s necessary to identify them, which is where the National Glacier Inventory comes in. That inventory is carried out by IANIGLA, the glacier research institute, overseen by the environment secretariat.
Casanello accused the officials of withholding information and delaying the publication of the inventory, as well as postponing work that was carried out in the area of Barrick Gold’s mine, which was considered a priority because mining is prohibited by law in areas where ice bodies are found. The three former environment secretaries appealed the charges, but this was denied on July 10, 2018, and their cases were elevated for trial. But to date, no trial date has been announced.
Enrique Viale, president of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, who’s involved in the case against the four officials, told Mongabay the delays are because of the legal challenges pursued by the defendants, with unresolved appeals still pending before the Supreme Court.
Villalba, who continues to research natural resources in the Andes, told Mongabay by email that he’s never received an explanation for the delay or a date for his trial.
Casanello told Mongabay that after the investigation and prosecution of the officials, which comes before the trial, another court was called to intervene. The judge now overseeing the case, María Romilda Servini de Cubría, didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for an update on the current status of proceedings by the time of publication.
The wait continues
Carolina Caliva, a water defender and member of Jáchal no se Toca, told Mongabay there have been more spills at the Veladero mine than the three acknowledged by Barrick Gold. According to Jáchal no se Toca, these spills were confirmed in water analysis studies conducted over the past decade, in which increases in mercury, manganese and aluminum levels were detected.
Barrick Gold told Mongabay that it implemented several remedial measures after the 2015, 2016 and 2017 incidents to “enhance containment and operational controls.”
Caliva said she would like to also see efforts to decontaminate the Jáchal River Basin and to ensure communities have access to water analysis reports. These reports have been unavailable for the last 18 months, even though the government developed a water quality monitoring station in 2021 to ensure up-to-date information is available for residents at all times.
Jofré of the NGO that filed the lawsuit said the conviction of the officials would be “an important event” because it would be the first time public officials have been convicted for breaching their duties in the mining and environmental sectors.
“The Veladero mine spills have had various impacts on local livelihoods,” Caliva told Mongabay by text message. “For example, onion producers had to export their produce under the label of another province because buyers from Brazil stopped coming to Jáchal.”
Meanwhile, the Veladero gold mine remains in operation. “It has been 10 years since the incident and the mine continues to operate normally,” Jofré said. In April 2024, Barrick Gold announced it was investing $271 million to extend the life of its Veladero mine until 2035, with an annual production rate of about 400,000 ounces.
“Let it be known that those of us who live here are people and animal species that depend on the water from our mountain range,” Jofré said. “We should find a way to continue our lives as a society without harming our brothers and sisters.”
Banner image: Graphic by Emilie Languedoc/Mongabay with images courtesy of Damián Profeta.
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Citations:
Tollefson, J., & Rodríguez Mega, E. (2017). Argentinian geoscientist faces criminal charges over glacier survey. Nature, 552(7684), 159-160. doi:10.1038/d41586-017-08236-y
White-Nockleby, C., & Odell, S. D. (2025). From obstacles to heritage: The shifting status of glaciers across 150 years of mining research. Energy Research & Social Science, 121, 103953. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2025.103953
Vaca-Escobar, K., Arregui-Almeida, D., & Espinoza-Montero, P. (2024). Chemical, ecotoxicological characteristics, environmental fate, and treatment methods applied to cyanide-containing wastewater. npj Clean Water, 7, 103. doi:10.1038/s41545-024-00392-9
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