Anti-mining stir may hit gold biz in El Salvador

January 12, 2009

Commodity Online
NEW DELHI: Gold mining is inviting big protests from people in San Salvador, capital of El Salvador, in Central America.

Protests were held as part of a campaign called a ‘I Reject Metal Mining’ by members of organizations opposed to the granting of mining concessions because of the threats to water resources and public health.

Salvadoran communities fear the impacts of gold and silver mining by Pacific Rim Mining Corporation, a Canadian-based company.

The protesters want the El Dorado mine to close. Pacific Rim hopes to start mining for gold and silver at the El Dorado mine in the village of San Isidro in the department (province) of Caba–as, about 65 km from San Salvador, once it obtains the necessary permits from the government.

The company acquired the property in 2002 when it merged with the Dayton Mining Corporation. Since then, it has been granted exploration licenses.

According to the company’s estimates, it could extract 1.2 million ounces of gold and 7.4 million ounces of silver in a period of just over six years. However, environmentalists believe that these figures are lower than the true potential yields.

Twenty-four mining projects with exploration licenses in El Salvador are waiting for a mining law, currently being discussed in Parliament, to come into force. The law would give the go-ahead to exploit concessions, which are currently suspended.

But in the view of the left-wing opposition, the initiative would create an autonomous authority in charge of granting concessions, taking over that power from the ministries, and without requiring environmental impact studies.

Environmentalists warn that if the door is opened to the mining industry, El Salvador will suffer severe social and environmental impacts from acid drainage, water pollution, and evaporation of cyanide, used in the leaching process to separate gold and silver from rock.

Mining would also exacerbate water shortages in a number of areas.

The most severe impact would be caused by cyanide evaporation, which occurs at 26 degrees Celsius; afterwards, rainfall would spread it far and wide, not only in the mining areas but in a sizeable part of the Central American region, depending on wind speeds.

One-third of the water consumed by the over two million people in the metropolitan area of San Salvador comes from Lempa river, which rises in southeastern Guatemala, flows through Honduras, enters El Salvador in the northwest and winds through most of the country until it reaches the Pacific ocean.

The 24 mining projects are concentrated in the north of the country, a farming region crossed by the Lempa River. The Lempa basin in El Salvador has an area of over 10,000 square kilometers and a number of tributaries, such as the San Francisco River, which would be polluted by acid drainage, according to the study.

Mining operations would affect four million people, environmentalists say. El Salvador has no mining tradition. The first mining projects were developed in the late 19th century, but they closed down a few years later. Mining was revived in 1940, but declined again in the 1950s.

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