A Canadian company has a plan to dig for gold in Romania. It wants to re-open a giant mine there. But as the World's Aaron Schachter reports, the company's plan to use cyanide in the mining process has upset some of the mine's neighbors.
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MARCO WERMAN: Across the Black Sea in Romania, there's a different kind of citizens action taking place. Residents of one community are trying to make sure a new gold mine doesn't ruin their environment. The mine could generate lots of profits. In tough economic times, the price of gold usually shoots up – and this recession is no different. But the project isn't a reality yet, as The World's Aaron Schachter reports.
AARON SCHACHTER: Rosia Montana – Red Mountain – is a gold mining town. Always has been. This territory, in Western Romania, has Europe's largest gold deposits. And the area has helped fund expanding empires from the Romans to the Soviets. But with Soviet-era mining technology, it eventually cost the Romanians twice as much to get the gold as it was worth, and the mines were abandoned. The town nearly was as well.
CATALIN HOSU: it is your first time to the moon, gentlemen.
SCHACHTER: Catalin Hosu works for the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation. That's the local arm of a Canadian company, Gabriel Resources – the latest outside interest to lay claim to the area.
HOSU: It doesn't look pretty, right? It's a mess.
SCHACHTER: The landscape is shocking. It's as if the hand of God came down, ripped out a chunk of land, and left behind the rotting steel carcasses of cranes and trucks. But it doesn't take an expert to see why someone would still want this land: seams of gold pop out from the mountainside like veins on a weightlifter. Gabriel Resources estimates the gold here to be worth about $8 billion dollars.
RICHARD YOUNG: So let's start by moving this.
SCHACHTER: In his office in town, Gabriel Resources Vice-President Richard Young uses a large 3-D map to explain his company's project. Gabriel plans to invest nearly $900 million dollars and put 600 people to work in a massive operation that would scoop up what the old technology left behind. And after 16 years, when the mines are finally played out, the company says it would leave the landscape better than it found it.
YOUNG: There are two valleys affected by our project.
SCHACHTER: Using the map, Young magically restores mine-scarred hillsides to lush green, and cleans up wastewater. But it's in how they get from here to there that Gabriel Resources starts to get into trouble. Young says the key to the project is new technology that allows the mining of low-grade ore.
YOUNG: You'll mine a block of material and there will be a high-grade vein that will go through it and a bunch of low-grade material around it. It all gets run through the mill and then you add the cyanide and the cyanide acts to separate the gold from the rock.
SCHACHTER: It's that use of cyanide that sets people off. Cyanide is a toxic compound that even the industry admits can cause serious environmental and human health effects. Its use in mining has a very checkered history, and memory is still fresh here of a mining accident just 80 miles north of Rosia Montana. In the year 2000, 26 million gallons of cyanide-laced waste water burst through a dam into a tributary of the Danube River. The toxic flood killed thousands of fish and left the river unsuitable for just about any kind of use. The use of cyanide, and the sheer size of the project, have set off local opposition.
EUGENE DAVID: We could stop them because this project depends on our willingness to sell our land. If we don't sell, then the project's dead.
SCHACHTER: Eugene David is a small farmer and a former mining engineer who has become a spokesman against the mine. The scope of the new mine would require the company to buy out hundreds of local landowners. David has been rallying his neighbors not to sell out.
DAVID: If they are really able to extract gold without affecting my environment, fine – but I don't believe that.
SCHACHTER: But it's an uphill battle. Two-thirds of the people here have already sold out, and many of their homes have been demolished. And then there are those who say this town is nothing without the mines.
DORU ALMASHAN: This area has no future. We lack infrastructure, we lack proper conditions, roads, water.
SCHACHTER: Doru Almashan used to work in the mines and now runs a small shop for the ever dwindling population. Almashan hasn't sold out yet, but he plans to.
ALMASHAN: Given human nature, I really doubt this gold is going to stay very long here. Gabriel was the first to come here and they are a serious company, and why shouldn't they?
SCHACHTER: Almashan doesn't share the environmental concerns of some of his neighbors. He has faith in the oversight of the European Union, which Romania joined in 2007. The plan has been approved by the Romanian government, which stands to earn at least $2 billion dollars from it. And Almashan believes that it hasn't fallen prey to Romania's infamous corruption. Gabriel Resources Vice President Richard Young says his company has learned from the industries past mistakes, and that the new Rosia Montana mine will be the best mining project ever built.
YOUNG: We are going to consume a lot of cyanide, but because of the accident here in 2000, there are very strict regulations on production, transportation, consumption, disposal.
SCHACHTER: But environmental groups simply don't trust Young's rosy scenario, and they say it's time for the region to make a clean break from both the industrial and political legacy of the past. Romona Duminiciou lives a few hours away in the city of Cluj. She says this is the most important environmental fight yet in Romania.
DUMINICIOU: There is pollution in Rosia Montana generated by a project done in times when the voice of the community doesn't matter. Now, the voice of the community says something else, that it doesn't want a bigger pollution. So such a project is not worth trying to do it since we have so many other values and resources here.
SCHACHTER: Among those resources, mine opponents believe, is sustainable development and eco-tourism. There's even talk of turning the region's mining history into an asset by creating a museum out of the town's miles of ancient underground Roman gold mines. But there's a new government in Romania, and Gabriel Resources hopes it will help ease the way for massive new gold mine. For The World, I'm Aaron Schachter, Rosia Montana, Romania.
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