The mayor of Salamanca’s Villavieja de Yeltes municipality, Jorge Rodríguez, is calling on local residents and people from neighboring towns to attend a rally on November 26, 2017, against Berkeley’s Salamanca uranium project in northwestern Spain.
Salamanca is the Australia-based miner’s flagship project and is located on the Retortillo-Santidad uranium deposit near the town of Retortillo. The mine is expected to produce an average of 4.4 million pounds of uranium per year, for an initial period of 30 years, renewable for two further periods of 30 years.
It has, however, sparked a wave of opposition from the get-go. Local activists, international organizations, and university experts have continually expressed concerns about the potential impacts of the mine and its nuclear debris on both the environment and the population.The new protest, backed by the platform Stop Uranio and the Salamanca Antinuclear collective, is expected to gather hundreds, considering that the mayor is planning to rent buses so that people can attend.
According to Rodríguez, almost 40 municipalities are against Berkeley’s plan. Their main concern, he told EFE news agency, is that the mine is located near a school area.
Besides announcing the protest, the mayor also said that he will create a working group whose goal would be to publish a document presenting their studies and perspectives on the Salamanca project.
Source: MINING.com
