Most of this gold, however, did not come not from legal mining companies. Traditional informal miners were joined by a new wave of gold boom miners: migrant workers and opportunistic investors willing to gamble on lucrative returns. According to the most recent mining census carried out by the Ministry for Mines and Energy, 86.7 percent of Colombia’s gold-mining operations had no legal mining title.
The mining expansion has taken a devastating toll on the environment, polluting the region’s rivers, cutting down its forests, and, in Segovia and Remedios, damaging the area’s very geological stability. In addition, mercury is widely used to extract gold from the ore, giving the region the highest mercury-contamination levels in the world, according to the findings of a United Nations investigation.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/17770/colombia-s-informal-gold-miners-feel-the-heat-from-all-sides
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