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Scores of Romanian archaeologists
and historians have joined a growing chorus of dissent against the proposed
Rosia Montana open-cast gold mine, which if approved would reduce some
of the gentle peaks of the Apuseni Mountains to dust, taking several Roman
ruins with them.
The academics, who sent a written appeal to Romanian President Ion Iliescu,
hope to prevent the destruction of nine Roman mine galleries, all but
one of which, by the developer’s own admission, would be destroyed if
the project goes ahead. As this issue of The Bulletin went to press, no
timeline had been set for a decision on the project. The Romanian Ministry
of Environment promised to approve the work if environmental conditions
are met, however the developer and opponents are sharply divided on what
constitutes legal compliance.
The consortium behind the project is Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC),
a joint venture involving the Romanian government and a Canadian company,
created to exploit gold dispersed in Romania’s geology — said to be Europe’s
richest. This proposal has generated a protest movement on several fronts
— and of an intensity not previously seen in Romania.
The arguments in favour of the venture have always been that it will provide
the country’s largest single foreign investment in addition to long-term
employment opportunities. However, the figures do not always agree. The
company itself now proposes a duration of 16 years, and employment projections
of around 500 jobs. The Canadians promise the necessary investment of
$400 million and the Romanian government holds 18%of the shares.
Gold has been mined in the Apuseni for thousands of years, but the lodes
have now been worked out. The remaining gold is locked up in a proportion
of one part gold to a million parts rock. To extract it, the rock must
be blasted, quarried, crushed and then treated with cyanide compounds
that dissolve out the metal. An open-cast mine already exists at Rosia
Montana but it is a loss-making, state-owned business that is subsidised
simply to provide employment. Rosia Montana Gold Corporation intends to
expand the work by 50 times. This is very hilly country, and it will be
necessary to move mountains. And that is just what they intend to do.
Local residents who oppose the project have formed
an organisation named Alburnus Maior, the original, Roman name for Rosia
Montana. The organisation claims to represent about 80 percent of the
population, including the owners and inhabitants of 740 smallholdings,
and it has support from several international organisations. One of their
main objections is the plan to store a cyanide solution in a huge lake
for re-circulation and re-use. This would be illegal in many parts of
the world, including the European Union, and has caused considerable,
widespread controversy. According to The Financial Times, the plan
has now been abandoned in the face of protests, and the company has substituted
a special plant to neutralise the cyanide compounds. This is a considerable
victory for the environmental protesters, since the heavy cost of neutralising
and replacing cyanide was what RMGC wanted to avoid in the first place.
The existing mine does neutralise-and-replenish, and that expense contributes
to its unprofitability.
The natives of this area are a proud, people known as the Motz. Mining
has always been their principal occupation, but many also have smallholdings
that have been in their families for many generations. They raise cattle,
produce milk, graze sheep and own woodland. However, there is an evident
conflict between open-cast mining - an intensive activity that rapidly
consumes the landscape - and such extensive activities as sheep-grazing
and forestry. The director of the regional archaeological museum observed
in a newspaper interview, "The Apuseni Mountains still represent an ecosystem
not very different from that which existed two or three thousand years
ago."
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