Neotropica Assesses Crucitas Mine Damage

Environmental Minister Rene Castro has let a contract to the prestigious Neotropical Foundation to assess environmental damage to the area of the controversial Las Crucitas open pit gold mine in the sprawling San Carlos canton.

The evaluation, to be finished in two weeks, is to assess damage caused by deforestation as the owner, Industrias Infinito, a Canadian subsidiary, prepared the mine site.

The Canadian company has spent more time in court fighting challenges to the mine than probably any company in the nation's  history, dating back from then-President Oscar Arias's decree that the mine was "in the public interest."

Update: In what may be the longest running soap opera since Days of Our Lives, Industrias Infinito Thursday filed still another appeal of the Dec. 13, 2010, court decision that annulled the company mining concession. That decision ruled that insufficient technical evidence was presented to justify public interest.

The appeal presented by company lawyer Juan Carlos Hernandez alleges that the judcial process leading up to the court decision was defective. It is based on the mining compay's contention that Infinito did not own the land but merely had legal use of it.

Both environmentalists and community activists saw it differently from the President and filed a series of court actions against the mine since that 2008 decree. (See previous articles.) The Foundation's $20,000 contract asks it to place a dollar assessment of damage to the mine area.

Fundacion Neotropica was founded in 1985 and its current director, Bernardo Aguilar, even carries the unusual combination of qualifications as both an ecological economist and as a lawyer.  It describes itself as a nonprofit dedicated to "conservation and the just and equitable distribution of benefits generated by natural resources."

Castro's move to engage the Foundation for the study comes in obedience to a court decree that annulled President Arias's contract with Industrias Infinito and dashed the company's hope to extract some 800,000 ounces of gold from the mine.

The decision was later confirmed on appeal. The court ruling froze the $600,000 guarantee Infinito deposited in 2007. Environmental lawyers have demanded the money be applied to restoring the mine site. Currently, the company only retains 15 employees inside the country.