Pan American Silver confirms ‘minor’ tailings spill at Huaron in Peru

Pan American Silver (TSX: PAA; NASDAQ: PAAS) has confirmed that a small tailings spill at its Huaron underground mine in central Peru, first reported in the local press, occurred earlier this week.

“The Huaron mine experienced an unintended release of tailings fines and water from decant water piping that was mostly contained in the piping containment channel, however, a small volume overflowed the channel downstream,” Siren Fisekci, VP investor relations and corporate communications, told The Northern Miner.

Fisekci said the spill, which occurred at 4 a.m. on Dec. 12, was cleaned up within 24 hours.

“We immediately notified the local Huayllay community and community representatives conducted a site inspection the morning of Dec. 12th,” she said. “The local water authority and the Agency for Environmental Evaluation and Enforcement (OEFA) also conducted inspections. No specific concerns were raised.”

Fisekci noted that the mill is operating.

When asked if there were any details on the amount of material spilled or over what period of time, Fisekci said no.

“I’m not sure we’ll release those kinds of details,” she said. “It was minor, not material, and inspections have been done by the relevant inspection agencies so there’s no reason why we’d provide that kind of detail. If this was a material event and there was more clean-up involved or an impact on operations then we’d issue a press release with more details but we can’t do that for every operational incident, and given that this was much smaller in scale and no material impact we wouldn’t get into that kind of detail.”