The following blog was written by Diana Martin of MiningWatch Canada and María Alejandra Torres García of Earthworks.
Barrick Gold’s Annual General Shareholder Meeting (AGM) is virtual again this year. After last year’s AGM, the company announced it would “continue to host virtual-only annual general meetings despite calls for public companies to return to an in-person format.” Despite this decision, in the Dominican Republic, the Comité Nuevo Renacer – representing 450 families living downstream of the Pueblo Viejo mine and the El Llagal tailings storage facility – wants to remind Barrick and its shareholders that their fight for relocation continues.
In 2023, the Comité joined a Global Week of Action, demanding that the government stop Pueblo Viejo’s expansion project and relocate impacted communities. In 2024, the Comité repeated these demands in a video playing on a mobile billboard parked outside Barrick’s Toronto headquarters during the AGM.
Now, in 2025, the Comité believes its relocation request has reached a new level of urgency. They report learning from Barrick employees that the company will increase the height of its El Llagal’s tailings dam by another 14 meters. The dam, which holds back mine waste, is already over 135.5 meters tall and stores 100.1 Mm³ of tailings as of June 2023. The company projects the dam will eventually reach a height of 152 meters. Google Maps shows that some houses lie within 500 meters of the foot of the dam. In other jurisdictions, such as Ecuador and the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, regulations prohibit the construction of tailings dams when houses are in such proximity, given the difficulties for evacuation during a possible dam failure.
The Comité has also raised serious concerns about Barrick’s plans to build a second tailings storage facility, “El Naranjo,” to be located six kilometers southeast of the plant and close to the existing El Llagal dam. According to Dr. Steven Emerman’s 2023 independent review of Barrick's environmental impact study for the proposed expansion. El Naranjo would be “one of the largest earth-core rockfill dams in the world,” standing at 157 meters. Barrick disputed parts of Dr. Emerman's analysis, but not the characterization of the size of the dam. Barrick’s own documents indicate that the expected consequences of a dam failure at both El Llagal and El Naranjo have been rated as “extreme,” meaning that more than 100 fatalities could be “expected in the event of dam failure.”
Given the possibility of extreme consequences in both cases should the dams experience a failure, the Comité has been supporting six communities at risk of being displaced by the proposed El Naranjo tailings dam. These communities allege they have not reached an agreement with Barrick regarding adequate relocation and fair crop compensation. While negotiations continue, as of April 2025, community members are actively trying to prevent Barrick employees – accompanied by soldiers – from cutting down trees at the headwaters of the El Naranjo River, a vital part of the local ecosystem. Listin Diario reports that “[t]he residents of the area have formed a common front against the indiscriminate logging which, they argue, not only endangers their environment but also their livelihoods.” As further reported by Listin Diario, Barrick’s environmental department, however, maintains that the tree removal is part of a road construction project on its private land so that “cars can pass over the stream, without affecting the water quality.”
As Barrick Gold meets virtually with its shareholders today, the Comité and the many communities it represents and supports are mobilizing outside Barrick’s office in Santo Domingo. They are raising their voices in defense of water, opposing the road construction tied to the expansion, and fighting to protect the Naranjo River. They reiterate to Barrick Gold and its shareholders that they do not want to be part of the “more than 100 fatalities” predicted in the event of a dam failure. They are urgently calling for relocation before tragedy strikes.