Exploitation scope is extended to obtain quartz in a place of great ecological importance
The open pit mine that is projected in the northeast of Segovia for the extraction of quartz It will be much larger than initially planned, and could reach 4,000 hectares as a whole, according to what the neighborhood groups that oppose this initiative have announced. Instead, the company claims that the project will not cause irreversible environmental damage.
The Citizen Platform against the open pit mine in the Northeast of Segovia will present allegations to the new Erimsa/Elkem mining project in the region, once the Galician company, with Norwegian capital and owned by the Chinese state fund National Bluestar, has requested 45 new mining grids (1,287 ha.) in the municipalities of Sepúlveda (Duratón), Barbolla and Sotillo, to extract 80,000 tons of metallurgical quartz annually.
This is how the platform explains it in a statement, once the project has been published in the Official Gazette of Castilla y León (BOCYL) and the period for public information and allegations remains open. ERIMSA/Elkem It has requested a first mining project in the Northeast of Segovia that would cover an area of 2,785 ha., and now it is requesting another one of almost 1,300 ha. further, with which the impacts on the environment, health and heritage of this area will multiply exponentially, argue neighbors and farmers integrated into the platform.
This new project surrounds several archaeological sites of great importance such as Confloenta and is located next to the Duratón and Serrano rivers. According to the Platform against the Mine, the location chosen by Erimsa/Elkem is an area with an unquestionable cultural and archaeological heritage, with protected natural spaces, vulnerable flora and fauna.
Besides, its inhabitants maintain a way of life based on agriculture, livestock and sustainable tourism, that they would be affected forever. “Mining of this type puts our natural, ethnographic and cultural heritage and our way of life at risk,” says Marisa Moro, spokesperson for the Platform, in statements to Efe.
“The promoter’s own environmental impact reports are devastating,” Moro continues, “The landscape damage, the destruction of vegetation, the flight or death of fauna, the increase in noise and inconvenience are accepted, for the sake of a hypothetical indirect use -and only 6 direct jobs- and obtaining raw materials that, furthermore, are not even processed here. This mine will bring certain destruction of many of the jobs of our companies dedicated to nature and tourism and the exodus of ranchers and farmers to other areas.
The company version
The company, domiciled in La Coruña, is a subsidiary of the Norwegian company Elkem, whose majority shareholder ands the Chinese group National Bluestar, and has tried to “send a message of tranquility to public opinion & rdquor; regarding the project and “listen to the concerns of the citizens”, the Town Halls and the associations that have expressed their doubts.
The company has reiterated in a statement that its soil screening system guarantees the “total recovery of the land in the same conditions as before the intervention & rdquor;since they first separate the productive layer of the soil to a depth of about one and a half meters.
Through screening, all the material that is larger than four centimeters is extracted and the rest is left in the same place, so “the farms remain at their original level & rdquor ;, “they do not experience erosion & rdquor; and “maintain their fertility & rdquor;the company has specified.
Finally, the process ends with leveling and subsoiling after depositing the productive layer separated at the beginning in the same place.
“No one will see large tracts of land where we are screening because We only do it from two hectares to two hectares and only when we completely restore these farms do we continue in other areas. In addition, always in favorable weather conditions and on a rental basis,” the company said in the statement.
The Duraton River, affected
For Ecologists in Action, on the other hand, the damage would be serious and would affect the Duratón River above all. Specific, would impact on the so-called Riberas del Río Duratón Special Conservation Zone (ZEC-ES41600849), belonging to the European Natura 2000 conservation network, which runs through about 40 km of the Duratón River, in two separate sections.
The first section, 25 km long, runs entirely through the province of Segovia, from the foot of the Somosierra mountain and reaches the mouth of the Ayuso and de la Hoz rivers, in the center of Sepúlveda.
This section of the river would be fully affected by the open-cast mining project presented by the company ERIMSA, which has chosen a good part of the river valley from among the spaces to be exploited, except for a meager 25-meter corridor on both sides of the riverbed. , they explain in a note.
The destruction of the plant cover associated with mining activity, together with the loss of soil porosity caused by the removal of materials of more than 40 mm in diameter and the soil compaction caused by the passage of machinerywould cause a strong increase in water erosion in the basin that feeds the Duratón, the organization affirms.
Therefore, Ecologists in action of Segovia concludes that the projected mining exploitation would have undoubted impacts on the ecological values that motivated the declaration of the ZEC.
“Although perimeter trenches are made in the exploited plots, in the rainy season, the waters would end up being incorporated into the hydrographic network carrying very high sediment loads. These sediments, in turn, would cause a deterioration in the quality of the Duratón waters, harming aquatic species,” they point out.
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