A corporate warning to El Salvador: Give up your gold or pay $315 million
Jamie Stark August 1, 2014 07:52
A corporate warning to El Salvador: Give up your gold or pay $315 million
As Salvadorans debate a mining ban due to pollution concerns, a large mining company has filed suit against the government.
SAN SEBASTIAN, El Salvador — Vasita Escobar is certain that chemicals from the abandoned gold mine upriver from her house are slowly killing her family.
“This company that has destroyed life, wanted to keep going,” said Escobar, in reference to Commerce Group Corp., a Wisconsin-based outfit that stopped mining for gold in San Sebastian in 2006 after permit difficulties. “My kids never get better—they’re always skinny. They always breathe the river water, they play in there. When I see my kids suffering, I know others’ are too.”
A 2012 study confirmed Escobar’s fears: the river next to her home is contaminated with 9 times the acceptable limit of cyanide, and 1,000 times the acceptable level of iron. Cyanide is part of the chemical cocktail used on such mining sites to separate precious metals from excavated rock, and can run off into land and water.
In El Salvador as around the world, the process of digging up and crushing rock during gold mining releases naturally-occurring arsenic. But here, some of that arsenic filters through into the nearby river. When swallowed by children, it can lead to poisoning and even death.
More:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/rights/el-salvador-gold-mining-lawsuit