Cyanide, Mining, and the Environment

North America’s largest gold and copper mine could be located in the hills above Bristol Bay in Alaska—home to the largest
sockeye salmon fishery in the world.1 But the prospect of actually
developing it is in doubt, amid fears about the threat posed to the
environment by the mine’s possible reliance on cyanide as a
leachate to remove the valuable minerals.2 One of the largest deposits of gold in Montana, the Seven-Up Pete McDonald Project,
remains untouched because, by popular initiative, Montana citizens voted to prohibit the use of cyanide in gold mining operations.3 These voters feared that cyanide would be used by the
mine and were concerned about its effect on the nearby rivers.4
The fear of cyanide in mining is not limited to the United
States—it is international. The European Parliament has called
for a complete ban on the use of cyanide mining technologies in
the European Union because a ban “is the only way to protect []
water resources and ecosystems against cyanide pollution from
mining activities.
http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1728&context=pelr