Santiago, Chile-Forget the energy crisis. Water is what concerns Chile's copper miners most, although the evidence of this is hard to find. Water is such a critical issue that miners are loath to talk publicly about it, given that it is a wider domestic issue in Chile's political landscape. But while the energy crisis has an off-the-shelf solution via diesel generators, miners enjoy no such luxury to ensure water supplies in the Atacama Desert, the driest place on Earth. The Atacama Desert area, which stretches from Copiapo in Region III to Chile's northern frontier with Peru, is the greatest copper producing region in the world, churning out some 4.3 million tonnes per year of red metal, about 27 percent of world copper production.
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