Argentina: the Esquel mine and Corpus dam votes

The Esquel Mine

Esquel is a town of 30,000 people in the Chubut mountain range in Patagonia, and a world-renowned destination for ecotourism, fishing, and skiing. When an Argentine subsidiary of Meridian Gold proposed building an open pit gold mine that relied on cyanide leaching several miles upstream from the community, opposition to the project arose.

In February 2003, the Esquel City Council was faced with over 1,500 residents who insisted that the Council address the mining issue. The Council passed ordinances that banned the use and transport of cyanide within city limits, revoked the city ordinance that accepted national mining laws, and called for a vote on the mine to be held the next month, six days before the frequently postponed public hearing on the mine was scheduled to occur.

The Vote

Voter turnout was 75%, and 81% of the voters rejected the proposed mine. Meridian, which had earlier estimated that about 10% of the people in Esquel did not want mining, issued a press release stating that it would "pause in the development of its Esquel Gold Project while it listens to the community and attempts to understand the issues important to the residents of Esquel." The vote drew immediate international attention and was covered in the New York Times.

The following month, the Province of Chubut passed Law 5001, banning open pit mining and the use of cyanide in mining operations. The validity of the law was challenged in court by Meridian's subsidiary, but by 2008, five other Argentine provinces (Tucuman, La Rioja, Mendoza, La Pampa, and Rio Negro) had also taken prohibitive measures against certain mining practices.

The Esquel vote model was soon replicated in other regions of Argentina where conflicts between communities and mining companies had arisen. By the third anniversary of the vote, similar local votes had been organized by the residents of Epuyen, Trevelin, and Lago Puelo, and the results in each case demonstrated strong opposition to mining throughout the region.

Update

The proposed Meridian mine stalled for four years as a result of the vote and continued local opposition. On April 17, 2007, the Supreme Court of Argentina ruled against the legal challenge brought by Meridian's subsidiary, and upheld Law 5001. The Court's decision, which stated that national mining laws merely provided a "minimum protection standard" that could be increased by local communities, could have far-reaching impact because it reverses the common legal assumption that national laws always trump local legal requirements.

The Corpus Dam

When the governments of Argentina and Paraguay announced they would build a third dam on the Upper Parana river, flooding a total of three hundred square miles of land, the affected communities immediately protested. The dam would destroy the last remaining free-flowing stretch of the Upper Paraná, a part of the La Plata River Basin, as well as flood areas high in biodiversity.

The Argentine province of Misiones organized and held a local vote on the proposed dam in 1996. Citizens voted 88% against the project. Despite the result of the vote, the governments of Argentina and Paraguay signed a working agreement in 2000 to resume plans to build the Corpus dam. The governments assured the public that the dam would be an environmentally sound project. New studies of the project have since been carried out.

Voter turnout was 75%, and 81% of the voters rejected the proposed mine. Meridian had earlier estimated that about 10% of the people in Esquel did not want mining.