Chile floods: 4 million people without water as world's largest copper mine suspends operations

[Little Tich]

Source: ABC News Australia

Heavy rains battering central Chile have now left an estimated 4 million people without drinking water, as landslides wreaked havoc and rivers breached their banks, leaving at least one person dead and closing the world's largest underground copper mine.

A woman was killed by a landslide in the San Jose de Maipo valley, a mountainous region just south-east of capital, Santiago, while a special police force is searching for another four people in the same area, said Ricardo Toro, the head of Chile's Onemi emergency office.

In Santiago, the national emergency response agency declared a red alert for the city of more than seven million people due to dirty water.

Television images showed streets in the upscale neighbourhood of Providencia overrun by flood waters after the Mapocho River breached its banks.

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-18/chile-floods-four-million-people-without-water/7333756

[Ash_F]

1. Wow that picture

I wonder how often floods like this occur there?

[Judi Lynn]

3. That river, the Mapocho, was the site of horrendous views of the bodies of tortured and murdered

political prisoners of Pinochet crusing down through the middle of town on their way to oblivion after US-supported Pinochet's people had finished with them.

Citizens walking by on the sidewalks in the city saw the bodies floating down river consistently, over a very long time. After Pinochet was finally out of the picture, people wrote angry messages about the dictatorship on the walls of the cement walls built to control the river.

Here's a painting made by a Chilean painter symbolizing an old man gazing down at the Mapocho, where someone he knew may have been thrown:

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From the original article of this thread.



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[yourpaljoey]

5. that really brings the ugliness home... damn

[Monk06]

2. Big copper is a toxic industry and completely unnecessary There is a world glut of refined copper

and it is selling for $6 a pound We could live on recycled copper for the next 100 years without a single operating mine

[Judi Lynn]

4. Thanks for the information. Didn't know. n/t

[Sentath]

6. prices may be lower than that

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/copper/

http://www.scrapregister.com/scrap-prices/united-states/260

[Monk06]

9. Six bucks was just the last time I looked and it's the historic average Copper is only important

for new house wiring and heavy equipment Little used in electronics anymore which has gone silicon / carbon

In a recession copper becomes uneconomic except for a few large producing mines During the 2003-2007 boom there was a large project slated for development in BC that was scrapped at $10 a pound That project is gone forever

Thank god becuase it was a located in a valley of virgin old forest in northern BC

Same with the big copper gold project owned by Nova Gold and Teck in Galore Creek Huge project but will never see the light of day at anything below $10 copper

The only consumer demand increase on the horizon is increased copper use in EL vehicles as cars go electric but even that technology is trending towards carbon and silicon based technologies

Even with new demand the stockpile of above ground warehouse and recycled copper is massive There is a huge glut in this metal Not even $1500 per oz gold can pull the copper price up

[JesterCS]

7. From the scrapper side, it's 1.25/lb

Used to be over 2 bucks, but there is so much scrap copper

[hughee99]

8. Am I not reading the article right?

The article discusses the shortage of drinking water and the suspension of operations at the copper mine, but never says that the mine is the reason the water isn't usable. If you read the article, you'd be under the impression that BOTH are a symptom of the floods, but reading some of the comments on this thread, it sounds like some people are attributing the water quality problems to the copper mine.