Town in motion

A GREAT DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY
The Conga Project of Yanacocha organizes a public audience with great success.

The small village of San Nicolas of Chalhuagon was the scenery of a historic activity for the people from the villages of Huasmin, Sorochuco and La Encalada of the provinces of Celendin and Cajamarca on Wednesday, March 31.

The results of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Conga Project were put forward in the Public Audience held on March, 31.

From 9 am different delegations arrived on foot, by trucks and buses, some with their community authorities, others with their majors and deputy governors. The scenery was massive. A four thousand country people attended, but only 3,094 were registered and participated officially in the audience.

In that event, all the doubts and questions were answered by technicians of Yanacocha, who presented the main features of the Conga Project, and also by specialists of the consulting company in charge of the Environmental Impact Assessment.

Darío Zegarra, External Affairs Manager of the Conga Project, said: „We are very grateful with our neighbours because we have the same interest; this mining project is a great opportunity because it will generate four reservoirs which will provide more water for the agriculture activities in dry seasons”.

As it is known, a lot of critics have been surprised because they thought that Conga project steals water from the agriculture activities. This surprise lies in the construction of 4 reservoirs done by Yanacocha which will work before the mine operates and compensate fully to the affected lakes.

The representatives of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) and the Regional Direction of Energy and Mines of Cajamarca led the audience. OMBUDSMAN and the Public Ministry officials as well as deputy governors, provincial and district majors, local authorities and the community in general attended the audience.

The Audience closed a series of workshops for Citizen Participation that began several months ago following the Regulations of the Ministry of Energy and Mines as well as other consulting and reporting activities that the Yanacocha officials developed village by village.

It is expected that Yanacocha invests again in the region which would be one of the most important gold - copper projects in Peru after they have collected the citizens’ observations and the Ministry has approved the project.