Photos

This is a picture of the dry tailings disposal system (fan shaped) at La Coipa mine as it looked like in 1994. La Coipa is a major silver/gold deposit located in Chile (Atacama region). It is being operated by the company Mantos de Oro, a Chilean company owned at 50%
in joint venture between GoldCorp and Kinross. (until recently it was operated by Placer Dome Cy).
The mine produces anually about 100,000 ounces Gold and 3,500,000 ounces Silver. "La Coipa"
The La Coipa deposit occurs in a very arid environment at 4200m altitude. This makes the environmental monitoring a real challenge. Not only are cyanide emissions to groundwater strictly controlled but the natural mineralisation has also a high mercury content that is remobilised by the exploitation and must be prevented to leach away.
Another view of the open pit can be seen in a "previous picture"

Locate the few buildings and the red car at the right side of the picture to get an idea about the scale of operations !