Barrick Gold shows ‘little transparency’ on tailings dam

Santo Domingo.- The Government confirmed that the tailings dam that the mining company Barrick Gold is trying to build will be built in Sanchez Ramírez, although the exact location is still unknown. The press release announcing the information, with the Barrick logo, but which speaks on behalf of the Government without specifying a dependency and distributed by a public relations company, indicates that two options are being evaluated in the province.

“We have reached an agreement with the Barrick Pueblo Viejo company for the tailings dam to be built in Sánchez Ramírez, an area where its operations are located. For the new location there are two options that could be viable for the mining company.”

This confirmation leaves many doubts that lead the environmentalist Luis Carvajal to question how little transparency the authorities have been in this regard, as well as to warn of the violations of procedures that the Government is incurring.

“The law is very clear, a project of this type, the mining company is the one that has to make a presentation of a set of alternatives with a primary analysis of those alternatives and the role of the State is, based on that request… to establish whether is it relevant or not?”