The trial for the spill of toxic sludge from the Swedish group Boliden’s mine in Aznalcollar (south) opened on Tuesday in Spanish justice twenty-five years after this environmental disaster, one of the worst to have hit the country.
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This trial, which is being held before a civil court in Seville, comes after years of legal proceedings which notably ended in 2002 with the dismissal of the criminal complaints filed against Boliden.
The rupture of a dam in a tailings pond of this open-pit metal mine on April 25, 1998 led to the spillage of more than five million cubic meters of polluted sludge, containing heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium or mercury, in a river.
Several tens of tons of fish had been killed and nearly 5,000 hectares around contaminated by these residues which went so far as to pollute the Doñana National Park downstream, a jewel of biodiversity classified by Unesco.
Photo archives, AFP
Boliden has always denied responsibility and implicated a subsidiary of the Spanish construction group Dragados, which had built the basin. “We took on a huge responsibility in cleaning up (the aftermath) of the accident. The complaint should be closed,” a spokesperson for the group told AFP.
This environmental disaster was one of the most serious to have affected Spain, after the oil spill of the “Prestige” tanker in 2002.
Legal saga
The region of Andalusia, where Aznalcollar is located, decided to take the case to civil justice in 2002 after the dismissal of criminal complaints filed by its services as well as by the Spanish State and NGOs such as Ecologists in action .
Boliden then filed a series of appeals, but the Supreme Court finally ruled in 2012, ordering the magistrates to relaunch the investigation, which has since been slowed down by new appeals from Boliden.
The Andalusia region said in a press release that it hoped that “justice would be done” during this trial. It is claiming 89 million euros from the Swedish multinational, the sums incurred to clean up the area.
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Administratively, the Swedish multinational had been fined more than 45 million euros by the Spanish government in August 2002. A sum it refused to pay, highlighting the absence of a judicial conviction. .
“A quarter of a century later, the case is still in a legal labyrinth without a verdict requiring the mining multinational Boliden to pay for the pollution of 4,643 hectares”, denounced Ecologists in Action, in a report published in April.
This “case (…) is representative of the modus operandi at the global level of the mining industry” which is “one of the main threats to life on the planet”, accused the organization.
The next trial hearings will take place on July 6, 11 and 13.
The Aznalcollar mine should reopen soon. The Mexican mining conglomerate Grupo Mexico, which will operate it, is awaiting the last authorizations from the region.