Rosia Montana - krajobraz po gorączce złota

Rosia Montana, sur une colline, cette modeste fermiere abreuve ses deux vaches a proximite de l'usine de traitement d'un gigantesque carriere de cuivre a ciel ouvert. The Transylvanian Carpathian Mountains are known for their rich underground resources. This is particularly true in the commune of Rosia Montana, nestled in the heart of the Apuseni Mountains. Exploited since antiquity by the Romans, its gold veins have never ceased to whet appetites. In 1997, Gabriel Resources (GR), a Canadian company, in joint venture with the Romanian state-owned company Minvest Deva, concluded a twenty-year concession contract with the government. The Canadians planned to extract some 300 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver, with an estimated value at the time of $16 billion. This would have made it the largest open-pit gold mine in the world. However, the project quickly ran into a powerful movement of popular opposition in Romania and worldwide. Indeed, GR planned to implement a polluting process, banned in Europe, using some 12,000 tons of cyanide. This involved the construction of a tailings dam that would have flooded the two villages of the commune and displaced their 974 families, divided between supporters and opponents of the project. Opponents highlighted the disappearance of the Daco-Roman site, of great historical and archaeological value, as well as an unfortunate precedent in the neighborhood: an "ecological bomb" linked to the exploitation of a copper quarry. In the mid-1980s, in Geamana, located just 7 km from Rosia Montana, an artificial tailings lake submerged a village of 400 families. Only the church bell tower still emerges from the toxic sludge that contaminates the groundwater and once potable wells. Rural life today barely survives on its shores. Faced with international opposition, the government asked parliament to decide. Rosia Montana was then declared a "site of historical national interest," paving the way for its classification in 2021 as a UN