Gold mining blocking Colorada wilderness protection around Browns Canyon

Gold mining these days is not shifting a pan in a river. Retrieving enough gold to make an 18-karat wedding band means extracting 20 tons of ore and waste rock. This ore and waste rock needs to be placed somewhere so trees are cut down to make room. Mining produces toxic mine drainage, which comes from unearthing rocks that have been buried long ago, releasing trapped air and moisture that leads to chemical reactions resulting in acid production.
These acids then leach toxic metals such as arsenic, copper, mercury, and sulfuric acid, which then runs off into various bodies of water, the closest here being the Arkansas River. Gold mining runoff is very toxic for fish and other aquatic creatures. Non-aquatic animals then eat those in the water or drink the water, and you can see the snowball effect from there.
In addition to polluting the water and grounds, extracting gold reveals mercury and when gold is roasted, mercury is shot off into the atmosphere. If they don’t roast the ore, then it’s doused in cyanide, which is very lethal. Mercury with all of its negative health effects, never degrades but at least cyanide does. Unfortunately, during the degradation process of cyanide, lots of byproducts then contaminate the groundwater.
http://www.inaraft.com/gold-mining-blocking-colorado-wilderness-protection-around-browns-canyon/