From the sky, the glistening emerald ponds of northern Chile are almost beautiful, but closer to the ground they harbor an ugly and dangerous secret:
REQUINOA, Chile: From the sky, the glistening emerald ponds of northern Chile are almost beautiful, but closer to the ground they harbour an ugly and dangerous secret: the reservoirs, filled with toxic waste from the country's mining industry, are ticking time bombs.
In 1965, an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter Scale collapsed a Chilean tailings dam leaving more than 300 people dead. An aerial view of a tailings dam used to store mining waste, in this case from copper, belonging to the Minera Valle Central mining company, is pictured in Rancagua, Chile on May 31. After more than 100 years of mining activity, Chile has 740 tailings dams, according to the national geology and mining service.
"These are sources of pollution for surface water, groundwater and dust that gets transported by the wind," said Lucio Cuenca, director of the Latin American Observatory for Environmental Conflict . Inhabitants can no longer drink the water from the Pupio River, but a financial agreement was signed between the mine owner and local inhabitants.
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