Chilean opponents of plans for a massive gold mine straddling the Chilean-Argentine border filed a raft of administrative complaints last month, hoping to reverse a regional environmental body’s conditional approval of the project. Residents of northern Chile’s Huasco Valley joined the Santiago-based Latin American Observatory for Environmental Conflicts (Olca) and the international marine-protection group Oceana to file 70 complaints with the country’s lead environmental agency, the National Environmental Commission (Conama). The valley residents, most of them farmers, assert that the US$1.5 billion project by Barrick Gold of Canada will cause water shortages and toxic pollution in the fruit- and vegetable-producing Huasco region. Chilean Senators Nelson Avila, an independent, and Alejandro Navarro, of the Socialist Party, also filed complaints with Conama... [Log in to read more]