There’s no such thing as a mine that doesn’t pollute

Studies and reports refute false myths and promises spread by mining companies to win over minds and hearts. Metal mining in Central America has damaged the environment, and brought little employment and more costs than benefits to the communities. It doesn’t generate sustainable development or revenue for the State. And that’s the truth.

Andrew Mc Kinley

In the 16th century, when King Ferdinand of Spain was defining the priorities for the conquest of the New worl, he gave clear instructions: “Get the gold, humanely if possible, but at all costs get the gold.”

Americas’ gold was the main attraction for Spanish conquistadors over 500 years ago; it generated the plunder of natural resources and the uprooting and extermination of the native peoples. Today the threat from foreign interests is back, this time in the form of transnational mining companies, mainly with Canadian capital, that are interested in exploiting whatever gold and other minerals have been left untouched in the region’s subsoil.

A belt of “invisible gold”

According to the mining companies, gold can be found in the Central American region in a band stretching from Mexico to Panama. This gold is in very low concentrations (between 1 and 14 grams per ton of slag), which is why it’s called “microscopic” or “invisible” gold. The technology required to make its exploitation profitable is very harmful to nature: it destroys forests and pollutes soil, water and air. Obviously, all this has serious consequences for the traditional ways of life and the most fundamental human rights of the most affected peoples.

Transnational companies now coming in search of Central American gold are motivated by its high price on the world market (almost US$1,300 per ounce last year) and low production costs given the host governments’ inability to monitor and regulate the mining industry. The existing laws in the region’s countries also benefit the mining companies by allowing the greatest part of this wealth to go to the companies and not stay in the hands of the true owners, Central America’s poor.

Peoples in resistance and
mining companies on the offensive

Communities in the vicinity of mining projects in Central America, and around the world, are the ones that suffer the impact of mining firsthand.

Together with other civil society organizations, people from these communities are raising their voices more forcefully every day to protest the few benefits and the high economic, social and environmental costs of this industry. To counter this growing wave of global, and especially Central American, resistance, the mining companies have gone on the offensive. They are trying to win minds and hearts by convincing us that there’s a new form of mining that’s cleaner, more beneficial for everyone and respects human rights.

Emblematic cases in Central America

We must objectively examine and analyze their new arguments to discover the reality, deduce truths, learn lessons and understand the real implications of this industry for the Central American region.

We believe it’s important, even urgent work so citizens can enjoy their right to be informed and make their own decisions about mining in their region, country, municipality and community. We’ll back our analysis and conclusions with the immense lessons presented by the most emblematic cases of mining in Central America and other parts of the world.

Among others, we consider such mining projects in Central America to be the Marlin mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Guatemala (Goldcorp-Canada); Cerro Blanco in Asuncion Mita, Guatemala (Goldcorp-Canada); San Sebastián in Santa Rosa de Lima, El Salvador (Commerce Group-United States); El Dorado in San Isidro, Cabañas, El Salvador (Pacific Rim-Canada); San Andrés La Unión in Copán, Honduras (Yamada Gold-Canada); San Martín in San Ignacio, Francisco Morazán, Honduras (Goldcorp-Canada) and Bonanza in Nicaragua (Hemco-Canada).

Worldwide, all mining companies present the same arguments in their efforts to convince us of the benefits of mining in developing countries. These arguments can be summarized in promises or “myths.” Let’s analyze these myths based on the reality and practice of Central America mining.

The myth about “green mining”

The first myth is that mining today is using a new technology that protects the environment. The mining companies talk about a form of mining that’s in harmony with the environment. They use terms like “green mining,” “modern mining” and “responsible mining” in an attempt to create the perception that things have changed.

Experience in Central America teaches us that each stage of mining—from exploration to extraction, processing and refining—causes environmental damage that’s often irreversible. In the exploration stage, the mining companies make hundreds of deep holes in the ground (up to 1,312 feet down) to verify the presence and concentration of gold. This process often affects the aquifers and water sources of the nearby communities, such as happened between 2007 and 2009 in the El Dorado mining project in Cabañas, El Salvador. In that case, the Canadian company dried up more than 20 historical springs in the local communities.

The cost of a gold ring

Given the low concentration of gold in the region, the production of just one ounce of gold (the size of a ring) requires extracting more than 20 tons of rock, destroying any forests and soil in the way. Rocks are broken apart with dynamite at this stage, polluting the air with dust and heavy metals. Landscapes and hills—sacred to the Mayan peoples of Guatemala and other ethnic groups in the region—are destroyed, leaving huge gashes on the surface of our planet.

Some of the biggest mines in the world today can be seen from space.

Water pollution

Gold mining requires exorbitant amounts of water, an increasing scarce resource on the planet and one mining companies rarely pay for. It’s estimated that the Marlin mine in Guatemala uses over 66,043 US gallons of water per hour or over 1.5 million gallons per day, the amount a peasant family uses in 30 years. Nearby communities have reported that more than 40 communal wells have dried up in the eight years the mine’s been operating.

A nickel mine in reconstruction known as the Phoenix Project, on the shore of Lake Izabal, Guatemala, daily uses 13 times the amount of water needed for the nearby town of El Estor. According to people in the Valle de Siria in Honduras, an area traditionally dedicated to livestock and the production of basic grains, the San Martín mine has dried up 19 of the area’s 23 original rivers in its nine years in operation.

But the most problematic source of water pollution is acid mine drainage. This phenomenon often occurs in gold mines when the rock from the subsoil contains sulfur, which is usual in Central America. When the sulfur in the rock is exposed to the air’s oxygen and to rain it changes into sulfate, which in turn transforms into sulfuric acid. This acid acts on the rock releasing other substances, such as lead, magnesium, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. These heavy metals and sulfuric acid end up polluting rivers, lakes and aquifers.

A dramatic example of this can be found in San Sebastián, department of La Unión in El Salvador, where industrial mining took place decades ago. The communities close to the Río San Sebastián have lost their main source of water, now polluted with acid and heavy metals and they are still suffering from the remnants of an industry that has done them much more harm than good.

The threat of cyanide damage

In addition to using large quantities of water, gold mining in Central America pollutes rivers, lakes and aquifers with cyanide, a highly toxic chemical required in huge quantities for the heap leaching stage.

This chemical is a threat to the flora and fauna and in quantities as small as a grain of rice can even kill a human being. According to government reports, gold mining in Honduras’ Valle de Siria left rivers and other water sources polluted with levels of cyanide exceeding international standards. Other independent studies show the same in Guatemala (Río Tzalá in San Marcos), El Salvador (Río San Sebastian in La Unión) and Nicaragua (Río Bambana on the Caribbean Coast).

Acid drainage is a difficult problem to detect during the life of a mine. It tends to appear after the company has already closed its doors and left with the gold. What’s worse is that it can last for hundreds of years, which is why some analysts call it the “time bomb” of mining. Mines from Roman times have been found in Spain and France that are still generating acid mine drainage.

Metal mining, particularly gold mining, is considered the main source of water pollution in the United States and in other countries with a long history in this industry.

Using US government data, the May 2013 Earthworks study “Polluting the Future: How Mining Companies Are Contaminating Our Nation’s Waters in Perpetuity,” points out that mines in the United States are polluting over 27 billion gallons of the country’s river and lake water with toxins and heavy metals. According to the same report, about US$67,000 million a year for all eternity will be needed to rectify the damage.

The myth of plenty of jobs for the community

In developing countries where precious metals like gold and silver are exploited, there’s a paradoxical reality: we very often find mines rich in minerals right beside communities living in utter poverty. How is that possible? Hence the obvious question: Who’s really benefiting from gold mining and who’s paying the costs?

Mining companies argue that mining creates employment for the local communities. International Labor Organization statistics, however, reveal that mining currently generates only 0.09% of the world’s employment. Furthermore, the employment it does generates isn’t for people from the nearby communities; it’s mainly for skilled people already experienced in the mining industry who are brought in from outside the community and even the country. Gold mining is heavily mechanized, so requires very little labor. The jobs offered to the people from the community tend to be the most dangerous and worst paid.

Short-lived mines

Another important element that destroys this myth is that mines today tend to be very short-lived. It’s estimated that the Marlin mine in Guatemala will have a life of only 10 years and the El Dorado mine in Cabañas, El Salvador, only 6 years, while the San Martín mine in Valle de Siria, Honduras, already closed after 9 years. Thus any employment generated by gold mining in Central America will be of short duration, but still long enough to pollute the soil and water, endangering agriculture, fishing, livestock and other traditional ways of life in nearby communities.

That’ll be the “economic boom” we’ll inherit from gold mining. The poor will pay the costs of environmental destruction and the threat to the viability of the nearest communities while mining’s great benefits will stay with the mining companies.

The myth of sustainable development

Gold mining exploits non-renewable resources. Once the gold is extracted from the subsoil and taken away it will never return to the ground, so there’s nothing “sustainable” about this activity in a developing country.

At the same time, mining’s contribution to creating wealth and revenue for the States has been seriously questioned in recent years. In “Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth,” a now famous November 1997 study from Harvard University’s Center for International Development about the contribution of metal mining to the economies of developing countries, researchers Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M. Warner concluded that countries with abundant natural resources tend to grow at a slower rate than nations without them.

In a similar study in 2001 titled “Extractive Sectors and the Poor,” Michael Ross, from UCLA’s Department of Political Sciences, concluded that there’s a strong correlation between high levels of mineral dependence and high rates of poverty. In the same report he also found that countries dependent on mineral exploitation have lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, less equality in the distribution of wealth, greater fluctuation in their economies and higher levels of corruption, governmental inefficiency, authoritarianism, militarization and violence.

Even the World Bank studies confirm it

The World Bank itself, despite having promoted mining in developing countries around the world, has had to accept the result of its own studies showing that the economies of countries dependent on metal exports tend to grow at a slower rate than countries without metals.

A 2002 World Bank study of developing countries with economies dependent to varying degrees on mineral exports between 1990 to 1999 showed negative economic growth in all the countries studied, with the lesser the growth the greater the dependence on metals.

Six years after the World Bank study, Thomas M. Power, director of the Department of Economy at the University of Montana, confirmed this reality in his study on the costs and benefits of mining in Central America, concluding that mining generally hasn’t brought substantial prosperity to the workers, communities or even countries. With some exceptions, countries specialized in mineral exploitation have experienced significantly slower economic growth rates than others during the last quarter century.

The myth of benefits for the country

This abundance of evidence about the negative relationship between metal mining and poverty in developing countries has led many analysts to start talking about “the curse of natural resources.” The underlying reason for this surprising concept is that the economic, social and environmental costs for developing countries are much greater than the benefits.

In order to study this matter further, Christian Aid, a Catholic development organization headquartered in England, did a study in 2009 of the revenue for Guatemala from the Canadian-financed Marlin mine in the northern department of San Marcos. It is one of the largest in Central America and one of the richest in gold and silver. It’s also one of the most controversial because of the destruction of forests, water pollution, housing destruction, displacements, health problems and social conflicts it has created.

The study found that in 2005, the year the mine started, Goldcorp, its owner, exported gold and silver from Guatemala valued at US$11.7 million, but paid royalties of only $130,094 (1.1%) to the State. In 2006, its gold and silver exports were valued at US$109.9 million and it paid the State about $4.7 million (4.3%). In 2007, they were valued at US$203.7 million and it paid the State US$11.4 million (5.6%). Looked at this way, it’s obvious that gold mining has been bad business for Guatemala.

This was further confirmed by a study from the Guatemalan Association of Investment and Social Studies (ASIES) in 2010. Analyzing the same mine, ASIES looked not only at the taxes and royalties paid to the State, but also the value of the jobs generated, the local development projects and other benefits.

Its conclusions point to the same imbalance identified in the Christian Aid study: “Clearly economic benefits have been derived from the operation of the Marlin mine. Nonetheless, when compared to the distribution of the value of production, and without including its economic, social and environmental impacts, it is evident that this distribution is disadvantageous to the State, considering that the State owns the gold and silver resources.” With the figures presented in the study, 13.9% of the estimated gross value of production from the Marlin mine on average is distributed to the country and 86.1% to the mining company.

The same study found that the Marlin mine generated three times more costs than benefits for the country: “With the values obtained, costs exceed benefits. Taking 2008, the year it was assessed, as an example, the cost-benefit ratio is 3:51, with the costs being considerably more than the benefits obtained. The economic logic of evaluating this kind of project would warn that the Marlin mining project isn’t economically and socially viable for the country.”

Where there are mines, there’s poverty

We found this same phenomenon in other countries that allow metal mining. The most significant benefits go to the mine owners and the costs stay in the nearby communities, generating a clear and troubling relationship between metal mining and poverty.

In the last decade, Mali, in Africa, has increased its gold exports by 75% yet continues to be the third poorest country in the world. The biggest and richest gold mine in the Americas, Yanacocha, is in the province of Cajamarca, Peru, while Cajamarca continues to be one of the country’s poorest and most conflictive provinces. Bonanza, in Nicaragua, has been mining gold for over a hundred years and 40% of the population lives in absolute poverty. The historical US mining areas (Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee) today tend to be the areas with less socioeconomic development and greater poverty, unemployment and dependence on government aid programs.

In his speech to the 2006 World Mines Ministries Forum in Toronto, Canada, John G. Ruggie, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, stated that the extractive sector (oil, gas and mining) generates the most reports on the worst human rights abuses, including complicity in crimes against humanity and a wide variety of abuses related to local communities, especially indigenous peoples.

The myth of respect for human rights

In their intransigent search for capital accumulation and profits, the mining companies in Central America—to repeat, the majority of them Canadian—have been notorious for violating the most fundamental human rights of the affected populations. One of the most overwhelming and frequent violations is the right of the nearby communities to a dignified and sustainable life.

We can learn a lot by analyzing the practices of the most emblematic mining companies in the region. The Marlin mine in Guatemala has destroyed whole mountains, polluted rivers and groundwater and generated vice (bars) and high levels of violence, especially against women. And it has done so without requesting authorization from the nearby indigenous communities to exploit their natural resources, a right the communities are guaranteed in the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169. The mine has destroyed more than 150 homes in Mayan communities through ground vibrations from dynamite explosions and the heavy equipment used in the project.

The Phoenix Project in Izabal, Guatemala, has forcibly displaced Mayan communities from lands they’ve inhabited for hundreds of years. Now, with a new owner, the project is responsible for the rape, torture and murder of male and female Mayan leaders who have protested the mine’s presence on their lands.

The San Andrés mine in La Unión, Honduras, has displaced the entire community of San Andrés. The San Martin mine in Valle de Siria, also Honduras, has polluted the local rivers with cyanide, arsenic and heavy metals, a fact confirmed by Honduran government studies. This pollution has generated serious diseases in people, especially women and children, from the nearby communities.

The El Dorado mining project in Cabañas, El Salvador, has created an environment of conflict and violence in communities within the San Isidro municipality resulting in the murder of four anti-mining activists, including a woman eight months pregnant.

They violate the right to consultation

The most fundamental right of countries and communities affected by gold mining is the right to define their own way of developing and to be consulted before the adoption of any activity that affects their ways of life or territorial viability.

Most particularly this is the right of indigenous peoples and is guaranteed by not only ILO Convention 169, but also the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Central America, however, there’s no case of prior free and informed consent by indigenous or non-indigenous peoples for the exploration and exploitation of gold. All too often, entrepreneurial interests prevail over communal interests and the interests of the country concerned.

Also all too often transnational companies exert more decision-making clout about the fate of developing countries than their own governments. Such is the case of Guatemala where the mining companies continue their exploration and exploitation without respecting the voice of the people even after more than fifty municipalities in the lands of the Mayan, Sipakapense and Xinca peoples promoted popular consultations involving more than a million people.

They directly act against
the voice of the people

In Honduras, a broad-based movement of more than 40 civil society organizations, including those of the Lenca and Mayan Ch’orti’ peoples, lobbied for a bill prohibiting open pit metal mining and the use of toxic chemicals such as cyanide. Ignoring them, the government pushed through a law, drafted with backing from Canadian mining companies, opening up the country to unrestricted mining.

The case of El Salvador, with its water and environmental crises, is even more dramatic. In this densely populated country described by the United Nations as the most deteriorated country in the Americas after Haiti, both citizens and the government have spoken out against metal mining. Opposition to this industry includes some of the country’s most important institutions, sectors, organizations and public figures: the Catholic Church’s Episcopal Conference, Caritas, the Human Rights Ombudsman, the Central American University (UCA), the National University, the Lutheran Church, the Conference of Religious Men and Women, the Commonwealth of Chalatenango municipalities in the Lempa river basin, environmentalists, National Coalition against Mining, Environmental Alliance, Water Forum, Health Forum and both a former President and the current President, Mauricio Funes.

Despite these voices, Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company, insists in extracting gold and silver in the department of Cabañas and has even sued the government of El Salvador for US$315 million for simply exercising its right to say NO to environmental destruction, refusing to issue a mining exploitation license.

Yet another Canadian company is going ahead with its preparations to open a gold and silver mine (Cerro Blanco) in Guatemala, a few miles from the border with El Salvador, despite the opposition of the Salvadoran government and the people of both countries. Scientific testing of the water from this mine shows a high arsenic content polluting the river Ostúa, which flows into Lake Guija and the Lempa river, El Salvador’s main source of water and electricity.

All the mining companies’ myths are false

Gold mining in Central America continues to violate peoples’ most fundamental human rights and obstructs the search by developing countries for their own paths to progress. It’s destroying traditional ways of life based on agriculture, fishing and livestock. Furthermore, it threatens important sectors of the national economies, such as tourism and agro-exportation. It also violates citizens’ basic rights, especially those of women and indigenous peoples, and threatens the social fabric of the Central American region, still recovering from years of political polarization and civil war.

An in-depth analysis based on actual experience with the most emblematic mining projects in Central America provides us with tremendous lessons. It teaches us that, in practice, the promises or “myths” promulgated by the mining companies to win hearts and minds in favor of this industry are false, unfounded in real facts. There’s no such thing as a mine that doesn’t pollute. Metal mining in Central America has damaged the environment through the technology it uses and nothing new under the sun can change this reality. Mining creates very few jobs and for only a short time and leads to more costs than benefits for nearby communities. It doesn’t create sustainable development or significant revenue for the region’s countries. Metal mining in Central America and in many other parts of the world continues to systematically violate citizens’ fundamental rights.

The luxury of gold and the rights of peoples

There’s already enough gold available on the world market today for industrial needs. Gold mining generates an unnecessary product, one that’s basically a luxury. Over 80% of the gold extracted today is used for jewelry. The world’s wealthy use a further amount as the basis for speculative investments, sheltering in gold from the threat of an unstable economy.

A vocal warning needs to be raised in support of serious analysis, dialogue, debate and decision-making, always prioritizing general wellbeing, national sovereignty and the rights of traditionally marginalized and vulnerable sectors.

Central American countries with mineral resources have the right and obligation to make their own assessments of the costs and benefits against the new offensive by mining companies in the region.

Andrés McKinley participated on behalf of Catholic Relief Services, an official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States, in the annual seminar of the Provincial Commission of Social Apostolate (CPAS) of the Jesuits of Central America and Panama, this time dedicated to mining, held in San Salvador in September, 2013.

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