The huge 36-metre-diameter sinkhole that opened up in late July in the Tierra Amarilla commune, around 665 kilometres north of capital Santiago, drew widespread global attention and saw charges by authorities against Lundin.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Ottawa SUN, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
The executive said that regardless of the outcome the firm planned to fill the hole using material such as sand and rocks with the same characteristics as a river bed, as well as fully sealing the affected part of the mine. Sanchez declined to predict the amount of material that would be needed or the total cost, though he said the firm had already spent some $10 million resolving the issue.Article content
The executive said that from 300-330 litres per second of water that had been leaking into the mine initially, the level has dropped to 10-30 litres per second due to sealing work.Photo by Johan Godoy“We are observing a positive development in the recovery of the levels in the aquifer and this means that we can look positively at this solution and we can say that we are not facing irreparable damage, as some authorities have indicated,” Sanchez said.
The program will also try to pump 1.3 million cubic metres of water that remains in the lower levels of the reservoir to other industrial users in the area in exchange for them stopping extracting those resources from the aquifer, Sanchez said.