NGOs urge DPM Metals to exit Loma Larga in Ecuador

Toronto-based DPM Metals (TSX, ASX: DPM) faces renewed pressure to abandon its stalled $600 million Loma Larga gold-copper project in Ecuador.About 100 civil society groups and 48 academics, Indigenous leaders and activists urged the company in an open letter on Thursday to permanently shut the mine and respect local court rulings and referenda. Loma Larga, in the southern Andes about 480 km south of the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, has been under court-ordered suspension since 2022. But the company is challenging the claims against it.“DPM is committed to high environmental standards and transparency, and we strictly comply with the laws in the countries where we operate,” spokesperson Jennifer Cameron told The Northern Miner, MINING.COM’s sister publication, on Thursday in an emailed response to questions. The company is reviewing the open letter, she added.The clash over Loma Larga has become a test case for Ecuador’s constitutional “rights of nature,” the weight of local plebiscites over national mining policy and how Canadian miners manage legal and social risk in politically sensitive jurisdictions. The letter follows a complaint to the Ontario Securities Commission alleging DPM has failed to fully disclose the legal threats posed by the project’s suspension.WatershedLocals are calling for “a Kimsakocha (watershed or headwaters) without mining,” urging the company to walk away rather than test Ecuador’s constitution and its communities in international tribunals. DPM has since “temporarily suspended” a planned 23,000‑metre drilling program and says it is evaluating “all legal avenues” to preserve value and optionality for shareholders.Opposition to Loma Larga has been building for three decades, the groups say, culminating in a march in the city of Cuenca on Sept. 16, known locally as the “Fifth River of Cuenca,” when more than 100,000 people demanded cancellation of DPM’s concessions. Several leaders of local water boards, campesino (farmers) and Indigenous organizations who helped organize the march now face criminal charges and frozen bank accounts, which the signatories describe as part of a broader pattern of criminalizing environmental defenders.“The fight for water and against Canadian mining in Azuay is no longer a local matter,” MiningWatch Canada Latin America program coordinator Viviana Herrera said in a release tied to the open letter. “All eyes are on the Loma Larga project. DPM can’t continue hiding the fact that it does not have and will never have a social licence for this project.”ReferendaSignatories argue that two binding municipal referenda in 2019 and 2021 – in Girón and Cuenca – extinguished any right to advance the project in a high-altitude wetland that feeds water systems for hundreds of thousands of people downstream.On the technical side, the letter points to a 2022 study by Ecuador’s Geo‑Environmental Corporation TERRAE and a 2024 report by Cuenca’s municipal water utility. These studies found high arsenic levels and warned that tight hydraulic connections between the planned underground workings, wetlands and groundwater could put regional drinking water at risk if mine infrastructure or the tailings facility failed.They concluded the project was not worth the environmental risk.DPM rejected that assessment. Responsible management of water and the sensitive ecosystem around Loma Larga are central to the mine design, spokesperson Cameron said. The environmental protection measures “meet or exceed” Ecuadorian standards, she said. The stance is backed upby independent experts and regulatorsshe added.Sizeable projectAn updated feasibility study in September outlined Loma Larga as an 11-year underground mine producing 1.2 million tonnes per year for about 155,000 oz. gold, 1 million oz. silver and 6.9 million lb. copper. The mine is to cost $593 million to build. It has an after-tax net present value, (at a 5% discount), of $488 million, assuming a gold price of $1,900 per oz. and an internal rate of return of 18.1%.Proven and probable reserves stand at 12.59 million tonnes grading 4.7 grams gold per tonne, 28.56 grams siler and 0.29% copper for 1.9 million oz. contained gold, 11.58 million oz. silver and 79.96 million lb. copper.Ecuador’s Environment Ministry in June issued a licence for Loma Larga’s mining stage after what the company described at the time as a rigorous government review.In October, however, the ministry revoked the licence, following months of local protests and questions from Indigenous communities about whether consultation processes were legitimate.Court actionsEcuadorian courts first ordered a provisional halt to Loma Larga in early 2022 after local Indigenous and farmer groups filed a constitutional protection action over a lack of free, prior and informed consultation and concerns about downstream water quality.A provincial court in Azuay upheld the suspension in 2023 and the Constitutional Court confirmed it in January 2024, leaving the project legally frozen for more than three years while the case continues.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com