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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Columbia: An illegal mining bonanza

As the mines proliferate, the environmental damage is stunning. Filled with sediment, rivers cease to be navigable, cutting off towns in drier months. Water that used to be clear or blue-green is opaque and grayish-brown. Townspeople can no longer wash white clothes in rivers—they come out gray.
Residents of one riverside town said they hadn’t caught any bocachico, a local fish that is a dietary staple, in about three years. And even if they had, the amount of mercury and cyanide dumped into the river—the product of cheap but antiquated gold extraction methods—could make them risky to eat.
http://thisisadamsblog.com/

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