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In depth

Status of the Cerro Blanco project in Asunción Mita

Dossier
Social license and prior consultation23-licencia-social.md
Domain
Social license and prior consultationlicencia-social
Room
Law/ley
Audited
Audited

Cerro Blanco (gold, transboundary; Asunción Mita, Jutiapa, in a basin shared with El Salvador; Bluestone–Elevar Resources): a municipal consultation in September 2022 came out 87% against open-pit mining; the environmental impact assessment (EIA) update approved on 9 January 2024 by the outgoing government was declared invalid on 14 June 2024 by the environment ministry (MARN) and the energy ministry (MEM), with 7 documented anomalies (forged signatures, more than 900 pages lost); switching from underground to open pit requires a new project. It shows the inverse risk: an approved environmental instrument can be voided administratively if the file is flawed. OCMAL records the conflict, with damage since 1997 and conflict since 2007.

The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.

Figures

Asunción Mita municipal consultationPrensa Comunitaria
87% against open-pitSep 2022
Updated EIAPrensa Comunitaria
approved 9 Jan 2024; declared invalid 14 Jun 2024 (7 anomalies)2024

Sources

Organizations named in the answer

  • Bluestone–Elevar ResourcesHolder of Cerro Blanco (gold, Asunción Mita): a municipal consultation in September 2022 returned 87% against open-pit mining; an updated EIA approved on 9 January 2024 was declared invalid on 14 June 2024 by the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) and the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) on 7 anomalies (forged signatures, more than 900 pages missing); the switch from underground to open-pit requires an entirely new project.Company case

Directory of organizations

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This layer is research: read from public sources by the archive's own team, every claim cited with the date it was consulted, and audited where it is marked so. It has not entered the verified store — no figure here was fetched back from its source or stamped with a retrieval time — so it wears no red provenance numeral and never mixes with the verified figures.