The magazine Potencia has awarded Caobar its 2020 award for the best mining action, for our system of erosion control and monitoring for the production of clean water in the kaolin mining area of the Alto Tajo Natural Park. This publication awards the Power Awards together with the National Association of Construction Companies and Infrastructure Concessionaires (SEOPAN), awards that this year meet its fourteenth edition and that recognize the best projects and works of machinery and infrastructure in different categories. This year, due to the coronavirus health crisis, the awards ceremony was held virtually. From this link you can read the news on the publication’s website and you can also consult the magazine online in digital format.
Caobar, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments, has been applying geomorphological restoration techniques since 2012 for the recovery of its mining holes, located in the environment of the Alto Tajo Natural Park, northeast of the province of Guadalajara. We are the first company, at European level, to introduce these innovative restoration techniques into active mining. These environmental recovery techniques are classified as Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Management of Waste from Extractive Industries by the European Community.
The recognition of the 2020 Power Award adds to other awards given to Caobar for its environmental actions. Our company received the first prize of Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy 2015 awarded by the National Confederation of Mining Entrepreneurs and Metalurgia CONFEDEM for the best mining restoration project nationwide.
In this line of work, CAOBAR actively collaborates in R&D&I programs, through various agreements with prestigious university teams (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad de Zaragoza, ETS de Ingenieros de Minas de Madrid, among others), also with public administrations (Ministry of Sustainable Development of Castilla-La Mancha) and private companies (Diseño y Desarrollo Minero, S.L.) that have allowed to address important research in the field of erosion control and mining effluents , the results of which have been reflected in different doctoral theses, and scientific publications at the international level, as well as in the conclusions of the postdoctoral research line within the Torres-Quevedo Research Aid Program of the State Research Agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
CAOBAR’s mining facilities have sophisticated instrumentation for the measurement of the flow and concentration parameters of suspended solids (CSS) of effluents that go out into the natural hydrological network from the retention-decanting raft systems, which control all runoff generated by rainfall in their mines.
CAOBAR is a participating partner, together with different departments of the administration of Castilla-La Mancha and Spanish and Portuguese universities, of the LIFE RIBERMINE project (LIFE18 ENV/ES/000181), to be developed in the period 2020-2023, whose main milestone is the recovery of the spaces degraded by an old mining company, already disappeared, in the town of Peñalén (Guadalajara) in the environment of the Natural Park of Alto Tajo.
