Even the ‘Good’ Gold Mines Are Pretty Bad

First, there’s the issue of the cyanide itself. In a good mine—and by most accounts Newmont’s Long Canyon Ranch is a good mine—the waste products are properly stored and treated. In a bad mine, like the Baia Mare Aurul gold mine in North Western Romania the waste water bursts and pours 130,000 cubic meters of waste water into one of the biggest river tributaries in Hungary. Even before the dam burst, fish had disappeared from its rivers for some 60 years, killed off by the cyanide leaking from the mine.
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