In a previous
post
I stated that Elizabeth May, head of Canada’s Green Party and Niki Ashton, NDP
MP, had gone to Greece in 2013 and bad mouthed a Canadian mining company on
behalf of anti-mining groups. The
article
on Elizabeth May’s website describing the situation was full of lies and
less-than-half truths. Having said that, I owe it to folks who are not familiar
with the gold mining industry or with Greece to clarify why it is so.
The Canadian mining company is Eldorado Gold
(www.eldoradogold.com) I will deal with
Perama Hill first. Three lines of lies, innuendo
and bullshit, five paragraphs to refute. It is so easy to be anti anything. You don't need facts or references, just write what sells and let others try to refute it if they can.
Perama Hill will require the crushing
of one million tonnes of rock in an open-pit mine (an average of 20 tonnes must
be crushed for one gold ring about 1/3 of an ounce.) This rock will then be
sprayed with cyanide, which often seeps into the water table. Local mayors in
the region oppose this project.
Perama
Hill is located about 30 km NW of Alexandropoulos in rough country, mostly
maquis and grazing land with agricultural land farther north (see link for
pictures). The immediate area around the mine is relatively poor with few economic
opportunities outside of small subsistence farms. The ore body, located on top of a rocky knoll
(altitude 250 meters) is small and relatively rich at between 3.13 and 3.46
grams of gold per tonne of ore. The open pit mine would eventually be 640
meters by 340 meters by 125 meters deep and contains about 11.7 million tonnes
of ore. The entire operation, pit,
crusher, buildings, leach pile, tailings and overburden, everything, would
cover less than 60 ha.
A Troy ounce of gold contains 31.1 grams. A standard wedding ring 70 cm in diameter by
1mm thick and 3 mm wide would contain about 4 grams of 24 carat gold. So a ring
of 1/3 of a Troy ounce (at 3.46 grams per tonne), would require 3 tonnes of
ore. Even at the Kişladağ mine in Turkey where the gold concentration is 0.7
grams per tonne of ore, it would only take 15 tonnes to make a 1/3 Troy oz
ring. So I am not sure what that line was supposed to prove. Ore concentration is only of interest to the
mining company – can they extract gold profitably.
The Anti-mining folks love to scare people with the word
cyanide. Cyanide salts are used in solution to leach gold from the crushed ore. You can read about the different processes of
extracting gold here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_extraction.
How gold is extracted depends on what other valuable metals it is mixed with.
In the leach process, the crushed ore is mixed with limestone to keep the pH
high and the cyanide in solution. It is
piled and the cyanide solution is poured on from the top, seeps through the
pile and is collected at the bottom with activated carbon used to pull the gold
out of solution. This is much safer than
the old method of using mercury to extract gold from ore. Mercury is still used in
artisanal mining and
is deadly to the miners and the environment.
The notion that the cyanide is going to seep into the ground
water is a lie, again just to scare the ignorant. There is a very thick very impervious
membrane between the leach heap and the ground since lost cyanide means lost
gold. Nor will it disperse into the air over
the leach pile as that is what the limestone is for. Cyanide is dangerous but most of the problems
happen in transporting it to the mine, such as happened to Cameco in
Kyrgyzstan, so mines are very careful to keep the amount of cyanide lost to a negligible
amount.
“Local mayors oppose it”.
Do they? What communities do they represent? What about the people in
those communities? Perama Hill is a
no-brainer but the government was/is so scared of the anti-mining crowd, it may
almost be a lost cause.
That brings us to Skouries where the fiercest opposition is
directed. Eldorado Gold acquired European Goldfields and subsidiary Hellas Gold
in 2012. Hellas Gold was the owner of Kassandra
Mines which include Olimpias, Stratoni and Skouries in Aristotle Municipality, Halkidiki
Prefecture. Olimpias and Stratoni mines were previously owned and operated by
TVX. As part of the purchase, Eldorado is cleaning up the mess left behind at
both mine sites.
Chalkidiki or Halkidiki peninsula (
map) is like a
three fingered glove jutting down from Central Macedonia into the Aegean Sea.
Agriculture and tourism is well developed in the west of the province. From
west to east the land becomes more mountainous and more forested. Aristotle
Municipality, the farthest east and least economically developed of the five
municipalities which make up Halkidiki, is roughly 75,000 ha of which about 22%
is agriculture and 77% forest, including rough grazing land and
maquis shrubland.
For the past year, thousands have
been opposing the mines by holding large demonstrations and protests. Concerns
focus on the impact the mines will have on water, old-growth forests,
agriculture, tourism, and the social cohesion of their communities. … The
Skouries project will extract gold and copper from both open-pit and
underground mines. There has been mining in Halkidiki for about 2500 years,
but, until now, it has been small-scale and underground. … Eldorado Gold has
started work, installing razor wire around the site, bulldozing trees, and
digging up two streams to construct a tailings pond.
There was anti-mining opposition in Greece before Eldorado
got there and it increased dramatically afterwards. Where ever fear could be
stirred up by anti-mining NGOs, they were there with disinformation. The
political situation in Aristotle Municipality lent itself to anti-mining emotion.
Aristotle with municipal capital at Arnaia, in 2011, was formed from three
municipalities, with municipal capitals at Arnaia, Megali Panagia and Ierissos.
Those who were used to wielding clout in the little municipalities found themselves
on the outside looking in in many cases.
The three mines, and the employment opportunities that went
with them were all in what was Arnaia municipality. The opposition to the mines comes from the
other two, led by Ierissos. It was dangerous for anyone to go to Ierissos that
would be recognized as supporting the mines.
Vandals destroyed equipment at the minesite, hence the razor wire (and I
am surprised the armed guards were not mentioned).
Skouries
Mine is located several km SE of Paleochori in the middle of forest (see
link for pictures). Some 300 to 400 ha
will be clear cut to accommodate the operation.
They were not “bulldozed”; they were and are again logged, prior to
cleaning up with bulldozers. The forest
issue has been jumped on by opponents.
Greece cooks and heats its homes with firewood. It is a huge industry and cannot meet
demand. Bulgaria is a major supplier of
firewood to Greece. Forests are critical
and are managed to the hilt. Trees are
cut on a 30 year rotation. “Old growth forests” is a joke. There are likely no old-growth forests in
Greece, in the sense of hundreds of years old, never touched by humans.
Mining has been carried out in Aristotle municipality for
2500 years; silver and gold from there financed Alexander in his world
conquering spree. It is a lie that is
was all small scale. Stratoni and Olimpias
mines were large commercial ventures and in the scheme of things, the Skouries
mine is pretty small potatoes too if you compare it to
Kişladağ Mine
in Turkey (see link for pictures). The mine will be 1/3 open pit and 2/3
underground. It is the open pit that has
people scared as they have no experience with them.
Two deep gullies will be plugged and partially filled with overburden
and then tailings from the open pit. The
streams that ran through those gullies were not “dug up”; they were rerouted so
they could make their way to the sea unpolluted. As the gullies are filled, they will be
covered with topsoil and planted back to trees.
Once the mining of the open pit is finished, the material from the underground
mining will be used to refill the pit, which will be covered with topsoil and
planted to trees.
Water pollution is another critical area in mine development. Underground mining has to deal with the high
groundwater in the area. It will be
pumped from wells and redirected so it also flows to the sea unpolluted. The fish are safe; the tourists are safe.
Agriculture is another concern. Opponents claim that dust from the mine will
pollute everything for hundreds of kilometers. Dust is a major issue. It is far more dangerous than the cyanide
everyone is so afraid of but the mine is also well aware of dust problems. The
explosives used at Kişladağ to break the ore so it can be hauled to the crusher
do not produce the huge dusty explosions you might expect, with rocks and dirt
flying everywhere. The explosives used lift the rock about 30 cm and that is
all; a ripple and it settles right down.
And there are water trucks everywhere constantly spraying roads to keep
the dust to a minimum.
Opponents are welcome to go to Turkey to see the Kişladağ mine
in operation and meet with the locals but to my knowledge no one has taken them
up on their offer. Facts must not get in
the way. “Our place is too small for this
kind of development. It is not we who are saying ‘no’ to mining. It is the
trees, the streams, the land itself that says “no”. Isn’t that sweet?
For more information, the Hellas Gold website is also good.
www.hellas-gold.com . It is in Greek but
at least in Chrome, the “translate to English” does a not bad job of making it
readable.
Why do I know these things? Because I was there. And as the Director of Hellas Gold's Enviromental Section, who was instrumental in designing Skouries, said "This is our home, our families have lived here for generations. Do you think we would do anything to damage our home?"