ENVIRONMENT: Greeks, Czechs Seek to Stop Mining by Canadian Firm

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

MONTREAL, Nov 20 1996 (IPS) - In its search for gold, a Canadian firm wants to rip up the birthplace of Aristotle and an area along the former Iron Curtain in the Czech Republic.

But the Toronto-based TVX corporation has run into stiff local opposition in both locations.

Near a recently uncovered ancient city in northern Greece, protesters blocked roads leading to company mines for nine months, while more than 30,000 people have signed a petition opposing the firm’s proposed Czech mining operation.

However, TVX, which currently operates gold mines in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the United States, and Canada, is not shy about venturing into controversial areas.

In Mexico, the company is developing plans to explore for gold in the embattled state of Guerrero. TVX is already prospecting in the Cordillera del Condor mountains of the Amazon, a disputed border region that seen several wars between Ecuador and Peru, most recently in early 1995.

Company officials said they have found gold along the Ecuador- Peru border, and they will announce next month whether they will develop mines there.

The situation is similar in the Czech Republic, where the company says it has not decided whether it will mine for gold at a site situated across the border from Germany and under an overlook in the Sumava mountains named Nebe, which means heaven.

Concerned about the possible environmental impact of the proposed mine, which is just a few kilometres from the Austrian border, local residents have made it clear that they want TVX to abandon the project.

“If there was one advantage of the Communists being here, it is that they left this land untouched,” said Frantisek Stibal, the mayor of the Czech town of Kasperske Hory, two kilometres from the proposed mine.

TVX has proposed to build a processing plant near Nebe that would grind some 2,000 tons of ore daily for the next 10 years. The plant would also extract gold from the crushed rock through the use of toxic cyanide.

“Mining gold here is madness. We won’t have it destroyed by this kind of capitalism,” stressed Stibal, who is backed by many of the 1,650 residents of his town, as well as neighbouring Germans.

Environmental concerns are not unfounded. TVX was recently reprimanded for 14 serious water quality violations at a U.S. mine in Montana.

Nor are residents of Kasperske Hory willing to drop these concerns for jobs and money. They say that they are not interested in the 400 jobs promised by TVX nor in the 70,000 dollars in annual royalties that would be paid to the town.

Konstantin Martinek of Dulni Bohemia, a Czech subsidiary of TVX, defends the mine saying that all the waste will be detoxified before it is dumped into a local valley. He also said the area would be restored after mining is complete.

TVX has spent three million dollars looking for gold in the mountains, even though the Czech environment ministry has yet to approve its mining plans.

Ed Baer, a TVX official at the company headquarters in Toronto, said that the company has tried to explain the benefits of mining to the mayor and local residents.

“Any kind of mining project requires a little bit of education for the local people. We’ve explained the merits of the investment to the mayor, and I think he understands now. But, of course, he’s not turning cartwheels,” he told IPS.

Meanwhile, archaeological discoveries and road blockades set up by local residents have delayed TVX’s plans to explore for gold in the northern Greece, where the company purchased the old Cassandra lead and zinc mines for 44 million dollars in December 1995 as part of the Greek government’s privatisation programme.

In January of this year, local residents blocked roads leading to the mines to prevent TVX from gaining access to the concession, which covers 314 square kilometres of forest on the Chalcidice peninsula.

Protesters removed the blockades in late October after Anna Diamantopoulou, the Gr]ek under-secretary for development, announced that a state mining research institute would carry out a study of the region before allowing an ore-processing plant to be set up.

In a separate action, Greek archaeologists obtained a court order allowing them to survey the area before mining began. Their work led to the discovery of two ancient cities, the first of which — Stagira, where Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. — is currently being excavated.

“Stagira is eight kilometres away from our mining concession. Whether or not there have been any discoveries within our property, I cannot tell you because there have been no official announcements,” Baer told IPS.