Chilean first environmental court has set a new hearing date for banned iron ore project Dominga, which is owned by local iron ore producer Andes Iron, SteelOrbis has learned.
According to a court document, Andes Iron’s court hearing for its Dominga iron ore project was now postponed for December 19, 2019, following several recent date changes.
Chile’s environmental court shall rule on the project, following a request, earlier in the second half of the year, from local not-for-profit organizations against the $2.5 billion iron ore project.
Chilean Supreme Court had been over the iron ore project for a while, but decided in September to hand it back to a lower court, the nation’s first environmental court. The Supreme Court said the local environmental court will decide if the project meets all environmental requirements to move forward. The Supreme Court decisions follows a series of setbacks, and reverses a previous decision by another court, the Chilean Tribunal Constitucional (TC), which denied a ban on the project, following a request by the same organizations.
Chilean copper and iron ore company Andes Iron plans to develop a $2.5 billion iron ore project, known as Dominga.The project aims to produce up to 12 million mt of iron ore per year.
Local environmental regulator SEA was the first reject the project in March 2017.Then, a Coquimbo’s environment commission had also banned it.In August 2017, a minister council kept the project ban. Since then, Andes Iron had been appealing the case.
More recently, in May 2018, an environmental court ordered the project to be re-evaluated. Then, a Chilean not-for-profit (NGO) organization asked for a ban in the project. Chile’s TC denied the NGO request.