The Last Gold Rush and the Real Cost of Bling

Like gold? Dig deep. That goes for miner and consumer alike.

It used to be that miners worked with veins that were gold and not much else. Now, however, the easy pickings are gone and big mining companies covet deposits that hold as little as 0.015 ounces of gold per ton of rock that is dug from vast open pits. Most of it is microscopic flecks.

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Any potential gold mine will elicit protests from environmentalists, and this one—with its unique threat to glaciers, which contribute to the headwaters of the regional water system, its extraordinary altitude, and its susceptibility to earthquakes (which critics say could unleash a flood of deadly chemicals)—drew special attention from anti-mining activists, including a chain email petition that was widely circulated, if not, Borg says, completely accurate.

Gold mines use immense amounts of cyanide, about 180 tons of sodium cyanide worldwide each year, to extract gold from ore. And despite mining company's efforts to contain the cyanide and completely neutralize the deadly poison when it's worn out, an awful lot can go wrong with the stuff. From cyanide-laden trucks crashing into rivers, to collapsing tailings dams (which are the structures that are meant to contain ground-up ore and residual cyanide), to little leaks here and there, cyanide released from mining operations has killed wildlife, contaminated drinking water supplies, and at times killed virtually all aquatic life in stretches of river as much as 250 miles long.

According to Antonia Fortt, an environmental engineer at the Santiago, Chile, office of Oceana, a Washington, DC-based environmental group, the hundreds if not thousands of trucks hauling cyanide up 15,000 feet to the Pascua-Lama mine, often through howling winds, and at times next to the rivers that are the region's main source of water present far too great a risk to the livelihoods of local farmers and other indigenous people.

Just as troubling, says Jim Kuipers, an independent mining consultant and mining facility inspector for Kuipers and Associates LLC of Butte, Montana, is the potential at this site for acid mine drainage, highly acid water that is produced when rocks containing sulfides, with which gold is often found, are exposed to air and water. Such acidic water can poison waterways and can leach heavy metals, such as arsenic and mercury, from rocks it passes over, introducing them to waterways as well.

Borg, however, says that Barrick will control acid generation and cyanide management with state-of-the-art technologies. And, he says, the company has, at a cost of at least $60 million, decided to voluntarily meet North American standards rather than the less restrictive Chilean standards for opening, and eventually closing, the mine. The higher standards, he says, require "more reclamation work, more monitoring work in the long term, more stakeholder consultation," he said. "You incorporate comments and suggestions and concerns, and those things often cost money and time."

Environmentalists now have little recourse other than hoping that Barrick's technologies work and promises are kept. It appears as though the company will break ground later this year. But even though it is likely that the activists won't prevent the mine from opening, the international attention it has drawn means that it will be watched closely, says Jamie Kneen, Communications and Outreach Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.

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