Sleeping Gold under the Red Mountain (2010)

Rosia Montana is 2500 years old village in the mountains of western Romania, and the site of gold deposits believe to be the largest in all of Europe. This area has been mined for at least two millennia, from the time of Caesar to the days of Ceausescu, and owes its name – ‘red mountain’ – to the streams of water turned red from toxic runoff produced by 2000 years of underfunded/uncontrolled gold mining. The hills, valleys, and rivers of Rosia Montana are in deplorable and dangerous conditions – ridden with arsenic, zinc, and iron well above the legal limits, caused by the acid rock drainage from two millennia of mining. The Romanian Government has designated the area as a ‘Disadvantaged Zone’ due to the high unemployment.
Who will restore those lands if not Gabriel with its legally binding commitment to thorough environmental reclamation? A private gold mining operation, promising to ‘clean up the mess’ in exchange for the indicated recourses of 14.6 million ounces of gold and 64.9 million ounces of silver.