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Chile's Codelco receives approval for $1 billion desalination plant

A worker monitors a process inside the plant at the copper refinery of Codelco Ventanas in Ventanas city, Chile January 7, 2015. Picture taken January 7, 2015. REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile’s state-owned mining company Codelco, the largest copper producer in the world, received environmental approval this week to build a $1 billion desalination plant to supply water to its operations in the country’s northern region.

The go-ahead from the Antofagasta region’s environmental regulator will allow the company to expand its Radomiro Tomic mine and advance with an ambitious investment plan in its water-intensive mining operations in one of the driest deserts in the world.

The plant would be the second-largest desalination plant in the South American country, behind the one supplying BHP’s Escondida copper mine, the largest in the world. Chile is the world’s No. 1 exporter of the red metal.

Reporting by Fabián Andrés Cambero; Writing by Luc Cohen

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