Bulgaria: Mining industry poses risks over environment

Bulgaria is among the European countries with richest gold deposits. Such deposits were exploited back in antiquity. Their gold was used for the making of many wonderful golden treasures found by the Bulgarian archaeologists on these lands. However, gold in these ores is mixed with arsenic. The coalition of environmental organizations entitled Cyanide Free Bulgaria has already won a very important battle. The mining companies were banned from using the most lucrative technology for processing of gold ores through the use of cyanide compounds. The huge quantity of arsenic mixed with cyanides could pose a very high risk over the population. The battle against the Canadian company which tried to use cyanide technology to process gold ore at the Chelopech mine was very long and difficult. However, it ended with a decision which prohibited the company from processing ore in Bulgaria. Instead, the Canadian company started to transport its ore to Namibia where the processing currently takes place.
http://bnr.bg/en/post/100336384/mining-industry-poses-risks-over-environment