November 27, 2018 — On Jan. 30, 2015, the Chilean environmental agency granted permission for the construction and operation of the Cruz Grande port in La Higuera, a community in northern Chile’s Coquimbo region. The port, built to handle 13.5 million tons of iron per year in 75 shipments, lies just 29 kilometers (18 miles) from the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve and the Choros and Damas Islands Marine Reserve.
The Cruz Grande project is owned by an affiliate of the Compañía de Acero del Pacífico (CAP), the main iron mining and steel production group in Chile and the biggest on the western coast of the Americas. The project’s approval went practically unnoticed at a time when attention was focused on the construction of the nearby Dominga mining project and port, owned by the Chilean company Andes Iron SpA and with ties to President Sebastián Piñera’s private businesses.
Massive protests against the Dominga project were organized in a bid to stop what many people feared would lead to irreversible impacts on one of the Pacific coast’s most important marine reserves. Yet the Cruz Grande project, located just 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Dominga, obtained its environmental license without drawing much attention. It’s also even closer to the natural protected areas than Dominga, with higher projected port traffic and shipment volumes.