A Chilean court on Tuesday approved a plan by JX Nippon’s Caserones Mine to rectify environmental damage despite a fresh challenge to its validity raised by farmers in the country’s northern Copiapó region.

The $42mln compliance plan, which has already been approved by Chile’s environmental regulator, the SMA, came after the SMA brought charges against the miner in early 2019 for over-extracting water from wells feeding the mine and leaks from its tailings.

It involves measures such as reintroducing desalinated water into the Copiapo River to counter the drought facing the region.

Local farmers had raised a challenge to the compliance plan on a technicality that it should have addressed all the 18 infractions of which it was accused.

“This court coincides with the analysis of the SMA that it is possible to separate infractions that caused environmental damage from those that did not, and subject them to different avenues of review and correction,” the court said.

Caserones, which is operated by Minera Lumina Copper, a company controlled by JX Nippon Copper, is a comparatively small mine in Chile, producing 126,972 tons of copper in 2020.

(By Fabian Cambero and Aislinn Laing; Editing by Sandra Maler)