Flashback to Chubut: Arcioni to repeal mining law and call for plebiscite

After days of serious incidents, with mobilizations in the towns of Comodoro Rivadavia, Rawson, Trelew and Puerto Madryn, the governor of Chubut, Mariano Arcionithis afternoon announced the repeal of the mining zoning law and the call for a plebiscite, in an attempt to stop popular backlash against the measure.

Arcioni had enacted the law promoting mega-mining last week, approved by the local legislature. Faced with the climate of strong social rejection that the sanction generated, the president decided to go back with your app.

In addition to the suspension of the law, the provincial president included an appeal –Within a period of 180 days– invoke a popular consultation so that citizens express themselves for or against the regulations.

Last week, lawmakers authorized mining zoning in two departments of the plateau (Telsen and Gastre) with a narrow majority of 14 to 11, prompting a strong backlash from residents across the province with massive marches and marches. serious incidents.

This approval, criticized by the National University of Patagonia and by representatives of Conicet, has sparked strong protests in recent days that have provoked severe damage to the provincial government residence and other buildings at the Rawson Civic Center.

The official initiative which provoked popular resistance will allow the chemical exploitation of metals in certain regions of the province. This is the regulation of Law 5.001 which prohibits mega-mining with the use of cyanide in the jurisdiction, but that in one of its articles, it makes it possible to determine the fields in which it could be authorized.

Opponents of the official project argue that it was made almost to measure for the Canadian company Pan American Silver, which has been waiting for 11 years to exploit the Christmas project on the set, in search of silver and lead from the deposit with a method other than cyanide but no less harmful: xanthate.

the xanthate and the polycryamide These are two of the reagents rejected by the neighbors because of their contaminating potential. By reacting with polyacrylamide, xanthate generates carbon disulfide which is a compound from which sulfuric acid can be obtained. While there are no regulations in Argentina that prohibit the use of this substance, there was a Senate bill in 2015 that never flourished.

Following the repeal of the mining zoning law, Senator Chubut of Ensemble pour le changer, Ignacio Torres placeholder image, questioned Arcioni’s actions. “I can’t believe the veto is lifted as doing the Chubut people a favor. They tease us, they think we are eating glass. The one who set the province on fire is Arcioni and now he’s complaining about the smell of smoke, “” Nacho “Torres said.

And he added, “I have never seen someone so cynical and of such poor political leadership as we see in my province. No one can impose on a people what the people do not want. And even more so when we don’t have compresses in hospitals, when we haven’t had regular classes for over four years and when they can’t even guarantee our safety ”.

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