Warning- very boring. Latest I can find on the new bill being passed giving Romy more control over environmental approvals. The idea is to effectively eliminate the mining court in the approval process. The big takeaway for me is the headline that a project has just had their permit fast tracked Who?
Really sorry to hit everyone with so many words so early but some may find this somewhat interesting.
Another controversy: half sanction of the law that speeds up mining procedures The Chamber of Deputies approved a project sent by the provincial executive that modifies the administration of environmental impact reports for mining concessions.
Within the framework of the Ordinary Session of Deputies of yesterday, once again the Executive sent a controversial project that quickly obtained a medium sanction, without much analysis, the modification of an article of the Code of Mining Procedures, with the objective of eliminate some bureaucratic steps in carrying out procedures, arguing the search for speed. During the debate, some legislators warned that the role of the Mining Court and the Ministry of the Environment in terms of environmental impact reports would be affected, which by the way, and as approved yesterday, what was put forward by this agency It will not be binding, while the Mining Court will be left without any intervention, since, as they indicated, it is currently a mere spectator and administrative handrail.
In this way, the president of the Mining Commission of Deputies, Lino Yonar, and the team of pro-government legislators (Villamayor, Fiore, Rallé) proceeded to defend the project, for its approval with each original semicolon, despite the insistence of his peers, to broaden the debate, especially given the uncertainty of the role of the province's Secretary of Environment, whose expeditions regarding the files that are presented, if the law is approved, will not be binding at all. Without mediating further, the project was voted on and approved, with a single abstention from the deputy Juárez de Orán, in addition to the questioning of some deputies who found no support.
Roque Cornejo – representative for Capital – indicated that, as the project is presented, what it seeks is to speed up the mining procedure, making it easy to skip a step in the presentation of the environmental impact report. “So far we can agree. Now, what happens when the bureaucracy is control?”, questioned the deputy.
For his part, the deputy for General San Martín, Santiago Vargas, considered that legislators must take into account the current climate situation in the world and, ultimately, the interference of human activity in climate change.
"We see that all these bureaucracies that block the files are eliminated," said the legislator, however he warned that the exploitation must be sustainable and that the project in question must "take care" of some points.
Yonar acknowledged that the Court did not approve the mining law project
The president of the Mining Commission of Deputies, Lino Yonar, carried out in dialogue with Nuevo Diario, an intense defense of the project that in large print points to the de-bureaucratization of the procedures that mining undertakings must carry out in Salta territory.
Article 34 of the code establishes that the reception is from the mining court, and from there it distributes it to the mining secretary and the environment secretary, the first making a mere administrative pass. What we want is for it to pass directly into the hands of the Ministry of Mines and give a much greater participation to the Ministry of the Environment.
Already in the morning, the Secretary of Mining and Energy, Romina Sassarini, accompanied by the general coordinator of said agency, Juan José Martínez, presented before Deputies the fundamental pillars of the bill that seeks to modify article 34 of Law No. ° 7,141, however and without the presence of the Mining Judge Dr. María Victoria Mosmann, to ratify or rectify a dialogue between all parties, prior to the presentation of the bill that yesterday obtained half a sanction. Thus, and in the same modus operandi as other initiatives, the treatment was quickly carried out.
Today the participation is little relevant or practically nil and the analysis is done by the mining department. What is sought is to avoid the administrative transfer, and at the same time the importance in the participation of the environment secretary and the technical contribution, that we remember, if this modification is approved, despite intervening more, its intervention will not be binding
At the insistence of the role of the Mining Court, Yonar remarked that his role was always merely administrative: "the Mining Court receives and forwards these reports to the Ministry of Mining, because it is the enforcement authority." And it is that although there is talk of a consensus between the parties in the search to streamline the aforementioned procedures, the truth is that the agreement of the Mining Court does not appear anywhere, nor did magistrate Dr. María Victoria Mosmann appear, to give explanations about it
"It could be, although it is one of the points that the project expresses in relation to consensus, it is true that it is not documented, but the foundations that are given to the project are also important," acknowledged Yonar. "Today the Mining Court has an exclusively administrative participation," he insisted: "that means that no power or any type of contribution is taken away from it, because there is none," he emphasized. Asked about the controversy ahead, in relation to a new express approval of a project by the Executive, without knowing the details in depth, as happened with the Anti-Picket Law and the Gag Law, Yonar argued that it is about: "what is a what can be
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