Environmental Commitment

Factors related to environment and health

In many ways, production activities of surface mining have placed a strain on the ecosystem. Apart from the dangers to the environment posed by equipment and vehicles run by internal combustion which produces

• exhaust fumes
• waste oil, and
• noise

Open-pit mining disturbs the ecological balance by destroying vegetation’s and pollution of rivers.

Pollution of rivers. Huge quantities of water are contaminated with mud as a result particularly of the open-pit production of alluvial deposit materials from recent riverbeds and the hydraulic mining of alluvial deposits. Usually no purification of the water follows. The effects of the suspended sediment burden endures. In some places, this may extend up to a distance of over 300 km down the river. In irrigated agriculture, the sediment burden renders cultivation difficult. In the dry season, the sludge concentration is especially high and therefore, has serious consequences for people living in areas down the river.

On one hand, the quality of drinking water, which particularly in lowlands is taken directly from rivers, suffers. Filtration procedures are generally not known. On the other hand, the river fauna is altered or is exterminated as a result of changes in the aquatic environment of the rivers. The consequences are felt not only by fishermen. It is also felt in the supply of food containing animal protein. The river system Rio Tipuani, Rio Mapiri and Rio Kaka in Bolivia presents an example. It can be seen at first glance in which river gold production is being undertaken. 

Disappearance of vegetation. The huge space requirements of open-pit mining can mean the extensive destruction of vegetation. In the humid tropics that is the climatic region of the eastern scarp of Andes, this has led to the well-known phenomenon of soil erosion (slope sliding, soil flushing, further sediment burden of rivers).