the mining company Old Town Barrick assured that the doors of its operations are open for anyone who wishes to go and check the quality of the water in its operations and the reality of the surrounding rivers, “in view of the avalanche of misinformation” regarding the quality of the water in its facilities and resources of Cotuí.
“We have always had an open door policy for anyone who wants to enter the mine, visit the water sources inside and outside the operation, and learn about the company’s water treatment plant and all the remediation work that we have done. done since the beginning of operations,” he said in a statement.
The company insists on assuring that “there is a lot of misinformation about the conditions of the rivers in the operation and in the mine due to the dark past that for many years characterized the mining in the country”.
“Those old practices are in the past,” he reiterated, and stated that since the beginning of its operations Barrick has invested to guarantee water quality.
He specified that the company carries out a “continuous and daily monitoring of the quality of the treated water” and has the Participatory Environmental Monitoring, which during 2021 was carried out together with the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo (Intec), who take water samples, They analyze them and ensure their compliance.
“The results of the 39 samples taken in 2021 confirm that the monitored water is suitable for use in irrigation of agriculture, livestock, among other uses, in accordance with national standards. Likewise, it was confirmed that the noise levels around the mining company are well below the maximum limits established by the regulations for the residential and industrial sectors,” he said in the statement.
He reported that, only in remediation activities of the environmental liability left by the old Rosario Dominicana, the company has invested more than US$375 million to improve the quality of water and rivers in the area.
The company also reported that it has a network of more than 100 monitoring wells and 90 surface water quality stations that ensure compliance with these standards. The results, he said, are reported every six months to the Ministry of the Environment.
“These investments and the work we carry out in our water treatment plant allow us to affirm that the waters in the Pueblo Viejo operations are in normal conditions, complying with the standards established in the regulations, and that they do not pose a danger to flora, fauna or for living beings”, he concluded in the statement.
