The collapse of tailings facilities in the Ananea district of Peru destroyed a major road connecting the area with the neighboring La Rinconada district, the highest human settlement in the world south-east of Puno.
According to local media reports, the tailings storage facility that collapsed on November 26 was maintained by the San Antonio Mining Cooperative.
As of Friday, emergency workers had identified 10 families affected by the landslide and reported that 29 houses had been severely damaged. Most of the houses in this area are made of corrugated iron. Municipal cleaners are working around the clock to remove mud from the houses and nearby roads.
The Puno Regional Government and the Regional Office of risk Management and Safety said in a press release that extensive inspections were carried out after the collapse and a number of tailings ponds built by local mining cooperatives in the highlands of the area were found. They say the man-made lake poses a great risk to the people of Anania.
"in this emergency, we must also add the blockage of the Ananiya river bed and the damage to the drinking water catchment. Taken together, these situations pose an imminent danger to the population," the statement said. "We also note that mineral mining is going on in disorder, which we are documenting in our report."
In addition to the cleaners, the machinery of the gold mining cooperative was also used to repair roads and reopen the Anania River.
Lindsay Newland Bowker, executive director of World Mine Tailings Failures, said in a media statement: "there are no reports of deaths, but the damage is widespread and the emissions are seriously contaminated with arsenic and cyanide. This is the 13th of 16 catastrophic failures expected in the decade from 2015 to 2024. "
Newland Bowker noted that Peru, along with Brazil, Angola, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Congo, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Myanmar, India, Poland and Serbia, was included in the WMTF's list of high-risk countries.
"all but two of the 13 catastrophic failures recorded since 2015 have been in these countries," she said. we expect the vast majority of catastrophic failures to occur in these countries, where the actuarial ratio of catastrophic failures to mineral production is very high. "
