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The town with the most gold in Europe is close to Euskadi

TrendsCoderTrends13 days ago

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Thursday, June 15, 2023, 00:24

Tapia de Casariego’s is the gold of contention. This Asturian council of some 4,000 inhabitants has been divided for years over the possible exploitation of Salave, a mining deposit that presumably hides 30 tons of gold. Outside of Russia, it would be the largest in Europe. Or at least that is what Exploraciones Mineras del Cantábrico (EMC) assures, the last company interested in it and owner of the exploitation rights of the mine.

The deposit was already known by the Romans, who abandoned its exploitation when the difficulty of extracting the mineral exceeded their technical knowledge. The cessation of activity gave rise to some lagoons in the washing channels built to separate the gold from the aggregates, forming a landscape that today is part of the natural attraction of the area. The problem now, that the media do allow further exploitation, environmental awareness is another and for many lagoons are more valuable than gold.

While waiting for the Principality to make public the environmental impact report of the project presented by EMC, the residents of the town show their disparity of opinions. On the one hand, there are those who want to protect the environment and argue, for example, that to obtain five grams of gold, one ton of material must be extracted, an excessive environmental destruction if one takes into account that those same five grams can be obtained by recycling 200 mobile. And that is not to mention the risk that possible leaks of the water used in the mine (with the presence of heavy minerals) affect the agricultural, livestock and fishing activities in the area. Thus, in addition to the Tapia de Casariego City Council, fishermen’s associations, farmers’ and ranchers’ associations, environmental groups, tourist companies and even the Principality of Asturias Surf Federation have presented allegations against the project.

On the other hand, there are those who, such as the regional employers’ association or the platform for the Industrialization of western Asturias and A Mariña, believe that the mine will generate employment in the region and downplay the environmental impact, alleging that today mining is more respectful than before. As an example of the new ways of making things less polluting, EMC talks about the treatment of tailings to avoid any risk of toxic filtration and the restoration of the land (filling the mine with the extracted material itself) once the extraction is finished, but also of the installation of an underwater outfall of more than two kilometers that would carry wastewater directly to the sea and of the implementation outside of Spain of gold recovery processes from sulphide ore, which “totally excludes the use of cyanide products in the area of operation of the mine»

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EMC’s is not the first project that the Principality evaluates on the exploitation of Salave. In fact, it is not even the first project presented by the same promoters since Exploraciones Mineras del Cantábrico is a subsidiary of the Canadian group Black Dragon Gold Corporation. In 2005, the Río Narcea Gold Mines, belonging to the also Canadian Lundin Mining, tried. In 2010, it sold the exploitation rights to Dagilev Capital, which failed again and took the Asturian government to court. The conglomerate was later renamed Asturgold and later Black Dragon Gold Corporation, its current name. The firm is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange although it is headquartered in Vancouver.