More than 7,000 people from a community in eastern Guatemala rejected the Canadian-owned Cerro Blanco gold mine in a municipal consultation, saying it would pollute the environment .

Julio González, an environmental activist with the Madre Selva organization, told The Associated Press on Monday that after counting the previous day’s consultation, 7,481 people had voted against the operation of the mine compared to 904 who voted against it. had approved.

The Cerro Blanco mine is owned by Buestone Resources and is located 15 kilometers from the border between Guatemala and El Salvador in the municipality of Asunción Mita, in the department of Jutiapa.

Extractive project operations in Guatemala, which are supported by the government, have generated several conflicts between companies and communities that have turned violent and even deadly.

González explained that the mine intended to change its operations from an underground mine to an open pit mine under the pretext that it would pollute less and that it intended to make a crater 1.2 kilometers from diameter and 360 meters deep. They want to dig a crater and remove all that debris and place it on top of the hill, González said. He explained that under the argument that the area is dry, it is believed that it will not affect it, but with climate change, there have been storms that have affected the place and caused rain. All that material out there with the rain would sink until it affected the communities, he said.

Some 15,000 people live near the mine.

The Canadian company has not yet ruled on the motion.

Concern over the mine’s activities has also spread to environmentalists in El Salvador and Honduras.

Bernardo Belloso of the Association for the Development of El Salvador, an environmental organization that participated as an observer in the consultation, said whole families came to vote peacefully. It was a civic activity and in a total sense of rejection of the actions of the mine, he said.

Belloso said the operations of the mine have already been denounced by El Salvador to the Guatemalan government. The mine contaminates the entire seam of water from which El Salvador feeds most of its population. This is not just a fight for Guatemalans but also for Salvadorans and Hondurans, he said.

According to the activists, the mine has filed a legal challenge to prevent consultation on the grounds that it would have to apply an International Labor Organization agreement on indigenous and tribal peoples, which would establish the negotiation and not the decision on the project. However, according to environmentalists, this does not apply since the community is almost 100% mixed-race.

The mine has been authorized since 2007 and according to activists it should have been canceled because, among other reasons, it did not pay the corresponding taxes.