(Reuters) – Alvaro Badillo remembers a time when his dad would take him fishing in the stream just a stone’s throw away from the dusty streets of their small hometown of Caimanes in central Chile.
Now, like countless communities that dot the arid valleys north of the capital, Santiago, Caimanes is left with a dry riverbed. The culprit? That depends on who you ask.
For many in the town of 1,200 people, the answer lies just a few miles upstream: a 470 foot tall wall that stretches nearly a half-mile straight across the valley. It is the tailings dam for Los Pelambres, Chilean miner Antofagasta Plc’s flagship copper mine, which holds enough leftover processed rock to fill some 140,000 Olympic swimming pools.
For its part, Antofagasta blames an eight-year drought in Chile for the evaporation of already slim water resources, and says the canals it built to redirect rain water have minimized the impact on the stream.
Both sides have findings that support their arguments and are thrashing them out in a court battle that could stop work at one of the world’s biggest copper mines.