Mining and Water in Chile

Mining companies have played an outsized role in Chile for a long time. Bitterness at foreign mining corporations helped bring Salvador Allende to power in 1970. Defending mining interests helped spur CIA support for Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973. Little has changed. Today, mining corporations are using so much water that supplies are threatened for much of the nation, leading to protests calling to nationalize the water system that Pinochet privatized in 1981.

The latest setback for the organisations was a supreme court verdict this month that ruled it was not illegal for a mining company to not pay for extracting groundwater on land it had been granted under concession because it was merely “exploring” for minerals in the water, rather than “exploiting” the water.

Environmentalists warn that the ruling could set a legal precedent for mining corporations to use water without any controls, even until a water source has been exhausted.

The ruling was in favour of the Sociedad Legal Minera NX Uno de Peine company, which Chile’s water authority had denounced for using groundwater without a permit. But the supreme court ruling said the groundwater pumping operation in question was authorised by the exploration concession and did not require a permit from the water authority, as stated in article 58 of the water code.

“We’re talking about water that was in the basins, which enables Chile’s valleys to survive,” said Villablanca. “In a word, they are leaving all of Chile without water.”

That’s real problematic for the long-term sustainability of large parts of Chile.