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A first in the world, El Salvador has banned the process of mining gold! This article explains why they did so. What the article doesn’t go into is why they are having the problem. The type of mining they use almost exclusively is called Placer Mining. Placer Mining is cheap, easy(compared to digging through rock), and all you need is water, which a stream has plenty of.

So here is the process broke down simply: First find a placer(spanish for sand bank) in your stream. Dredge placer with back hoe, shovels, or garden trowel. Take dredged material and put into a rocker, shaker, sluice box, or some combo thereof. Run said stream water through rocker, shaker, or sluice box. The water combined with any rocking or shaking will leave the gold at the bottom of the device you use. However it sends all the other material back into the stream including the cyanide and mercury that is found naturally in the soil but in very small concentration and greater depths.

Here in the US we have laws that require miners to build a “Catch Pond” that catches all the water and allows the cyanide and mercury to settle back to the bottom and reabsorb into the soil. This process doesn’t really work well. It is only done properly about 75% of the time. The entire process is incredibly destructive, destroying the entire stream from where you dredge up to 5 miles or more down stream. It will kill all the fish and can kill wildlife along the bank. However its still better than nothing which leads to all the poisoning that has occured in El Salvador.

I worked in a placer mine in northern Alaska where the procedure is quite common. I have seen the process first hand and have seen how the process could be greatly improved. However the mine I worked at had 4 catch ponds and several retaining walls in case of a pond breach. Yet still you could see the effects of it on the wild life around the mine and lake the mine was located next to. Of course the stream was destroyed, but in Alaska they don’t really care since they have so many. They also say the wolves kill for sport and don’t use the meat. So everyone is encouraged to shoot and kill the wolves, unoffically ofcourse. Needless to say all mining procedures could use some serious improvment, so could government regulation. Particularly in El Salvador.