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Regulatory Framework

4.4.1 The Las Cristinas project is being designed to meet and exceed Venezuelan environmental laws and standards, as well as World Bank guidelines and targets. Together, these regulations and standards provide the framework for the environmental assessment and environmental design for the Las Cristinas project. Venezuelan Decree No. 1257 defined the environmental assessment requirements for the Las Cristinas gold-copper project development as envisioned by Placer. These requirements were modified somewhat by MinAmb as a result of changes in the scope of the project planned by Crystallex, such as the project now being gold only. The EIS that was submitted to MARN addressed the requirements defined in Decree 1257 as well as the additional requirements in various addenda to the original EIS document.

4.4.2

Existing Environment

As described in Section 5.0, the Las Cristinas site is located within the sub-equatorial tropical zone in a flat area with minor undulations, parts of which, under normal conditions, are subject to flooding. Although much of the site has been previously disturbed by small-scale mining, the area can generally be characterized as tropical rain forest with a distinct rainy season between May and September and a drier period from January to April. Despite the fact that the Las Cristinas area has been designated as a mining district, it lies within the boundaries of the Imataca Forest Reserve and therefore is subjected to more stringent environmental controls than areas outside of the Imataca Reserve.

A significant portion of the concession area (approximately 34% of total area of the concessions, and 53% of area required to develop the project) has been intensely disturbed by previous mining activities. Although the surficial laterite soils are not very productive, vegetation grows very quickly, and biological diversity of the area is high. Crystallex has updated air quality, soil, flora and fauna baseline studies of the area and continues to monitor water quality within the project area.