Still working away. In the last five years, after the arrival of the Arab fund Mubadala, the gold project now known as Soto Norte, in California, Santander, in charge of the Sociedad Minera de Santander (Minesa), had a radical rethinking with the aim of being viable .´
Now it has become 100 percent underground mining, which starts at 2,640 meters above sea level (an altitude like Bogot), and will not use cyanide because, through a flotation process, the product will be a polymetallic gold concentrate , silver and other valuable minerals. In other words, it will be a primary material sold to foreign buyers, who will convert it into bars on their own.
It will include a coexistence program, with the responsibility not only to compensate the areas that are intervened, but to recover areas that for years have been exploited by traditional and informal miners, without any type of standard or control.
Under these characteristics, Minesa has been processing, since January 2019, its environmental license, to which it added a response last January to 107 requests from the National Authority for Environmental Licenses (Anla).
But in parallel, and with the confidence that the licensing process will successfully complete its process, since it is at least 1.5 km away from the line that delimits the Santurbn paramo, the company has already been carrying out activities on other fronts, in order to have 'advance work' for the construction phase of the mine and all associated production infrastructure.
This phase would start in 2021 and will take, according to Alfonso Palacios Castilla, Minesa senior geomechanical geologist, about 4 years.
According to Gustavo Cabrera, senior manager of Sustainability at Minesa, the great challenge of the project is to materialize as a value offer the possibility of making a socioeconomic transformation in the territory in an integral way, since it could multiply by four the GDP per capita of California.
"If you compare, in Tona, which is part of the province of Soto Norte, which has a GDP per capita of $ 20,000 a year, mainly from onion planting, that of California and Surat is around $ 3,500 a year" , he assures.
In this sense, for California and Surat, points where the mine and production plant are projected, respectively, not only is it planning to do mining, but also agribusiness, services and manufacturing, since the proposal is to bet on a multiproductive mining model that make other activities around extraction viable.
Local training begins
For this reason, and despite recent difficulties at the entrance of a meeting with businessmen in Bucaramanga, to show them the business opportunities that there will be with the project, in the area of influence, where there is a deep-rooted mining tradition, work de Minesa is to make the most of the economic possibilities.
This, not only to achieve the social license, but to pass on to the trust and appropriation of the project by the people, including compensation in the area of influence and recovery of the area of the La Baja gorge, where there is still artisanal and informal mining, which still uses mercury.
Minesa calculates that in total, in the 21 years that the production phase will last, about 9 million ounces of gold will be mined, that is, 410,000 ounces per year, equivalent to 13 tons of gold per year and 220,000 tons of polymetallic concentrate from the mineral.
According to Cabrera, the project already has a mining coexistence program, to which 160 partners have already been linked through the Calimineros cooperative, so that traditional mining coexists with large-scale mining.
Jorge Abad Maldonado, manager of Calimineros, said that on Monday, March 9, training began with the Seine in underground mining, as part of the support that Minesa will give them.
The idea is that some 300 miners who are today in areas near the ravine join, and that Minesa gives them a part of the title so that they can work and formalize themselves by carrying out production with the flotation technique and, in this way, they can be independent and legal, to eliminate mercury.
“They will be partners, but in an independent operation. We are finalizing the contract process to give them an area in which they work, ”says Palacios, explaining that although the company will provide the necessary technical support, environmental responsibility is covered by the Minesa title, with clearly defined obligations for the parties.
The plan is based on the 22 environmental management programs proposed to Anla, of a socioeconomic type, for the demand for goods and services, since, from a transactional scheme, it will move to a sustainable mining approach in which Larger socio-economic investments, which have to do with the impacts generated by the project and the differentials in terms of health, education, sanitation, social and productive infrastructure, which represent a greater challenge.
Native species, key factor
Although the Soto Norte project will not use cyanide, much less mercury, there is a rigorous plan for the treatment of water from humidity that is removed from the surplus material before technically disposing it in an area of Surat (it will be a tailings sandy with only 15% moisture). In addition, these wastes, arranged through a revegetalized scheme of terraces, will have a waterproof geomembrane at the bottom, so that rainwater does not leak into the subsoil, but is led to plants before final disposal.
Leidy Glvez, leader of Minesa's environmental management programs, explains that the project was rethought to generate the minimum impact, since of an initial extension of 18 hectares in California, the plan will focus on 8, to which 154 hectares are added in Surat, for a total of 162 hectares.
In this area, plant coverings have already been intervened in the past with pastures and crops. And he adds that for the entire area to be intervened, Minesa will have the obligation to compensate 404 hectares. "It is not compensation for compensation, or with any species," he says. To this will be added voluntary compensation in places where mining has been done historically, but where local miners have left surplus mercury and cyanide. To date, Minesa has already removed more than 300 tons from these sands, in a period of six years.
And to recover these areas, Glvez maintains that in the work plan he plans to hire local firms, since it is the people of the area who know the native vegetation and the species that are best for the ecosystem.