Install a new mining projects
In Villa Yacanto, a holding company seeks to revive a quartz. Claims to have official permits.
Villa Yacanto. “This project should applaud, not to question.” Gonis Diego that answer, a spokesman entrepreneur who tries to resume the operation of quartz on a hill in Villa Yacanto municipal jurisdiction in the Calamuchita Valley.
The company intends that the mines of Cerro Blanco, dormant for decades, back to the farm. But the news of employer interest and provoked the immediate rejection of neighbors and local authorities, who argue that mining conspire against the clear tourist profile adopted by the area.
To have a legal tool to prevent exploitation, now manages the municipality to the Ministry of Environment of the Province, to widen the area designated as “Pampa de Achala water reserve,” which begins a few miles from this area to be considered “environmentally protected area”, and thereby limit any mining.
In defense. Gonis says the company has the permission of the Secretariats of Mining and Environment of the Province to move forward, and dismissed the information disseminated on the subject, which it considered misleading. Further anticipated that work “to reverse the strong opposition expressed by a significant sector of the community” Yacanto and area. “This is just a small non-metallic mining project, quarrying of quartz, like many in the province and never caused no risk to either people or for the water,” he said.
Gonis said they are advanced legal procedures “is a quarry more of the 20 that are in the area. Not exploit uranium or other mineral or strange. It is quartz, feldspar is present, another third-rate rock, “he added. “We’re talking about stones, we must demystify the ghosts of pollution,” he said.
The spokesman said that directly, employ between 30 and 40, and “many others” would be added by the subcontractor. The businessman Jorge Warnholtz is the owner of the firm concerned.
The rejection. “Our position remains the same, we do not agree that the mine is installed,” reiterated John Paul Perucca, secretary of government of the municipality of Villa Yacanto. “We will fight all we can,” he said. In the resort more than two thousand inhabitants stable increase on weekends and in summer, most residents appear against the mining project. This mobilization rushed to the municipality to take sides in the same direction.
Perucca acknowledged “difficult” to stop a quartz mining venture, but confirmed that a strategy is that the area be included in the area considered “provincial water reserve.”
In fact, Yacanto mark which of these hills in Calamuchita born streams that form, for example, the Third River and Lake Reservoir, Calamuchita.
According Perucca, the central concern is not placed in the extraction of quartz, mica and feldspar, which are exploited almost like stones, but because he fears that the authorization granted the possibility is open to the company after adding other minerals, which have a greater environmental impact.
Moreover, among the neighbors lit a warning light on the effect of truck traffic under heavy load, and ensure the visual impact would create “disarm an emblematic mountain in the area”, which seems to snow, by the reflection of quartz.
Another point where the neighbors insist on the impact of the explosions that require the activity and the effect of erosion and soil movement on streams and rivers. In short, they argue that mining would undermine tourism priorities, grounded in the protection of landscape and environment.
The Cerro Blanco is located in the place the peach, a few kilometers from the urban area of Villa Yacanto, under the jurisdiction of this municipality. It is an area of increasing tourism development and activity in strong pine forest plantations and mills.
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