Crucified on a Cross of Goldmining
Katherine Mangu-Ward | August 21, 2007, 11:19am
There are two new films out on a contested gold mine in Romania, one airing on PBS tonight. Rosia Montana, a rural Transylvanian town (pictured right, in all of its glory), sits on top of $10 billion in gold.
PBS viewers will get one side of the story about the village:
PBS describes the film as a "David-and-Goliath story" [of poor villagers versus big mining corporations, but] viewers who see pristine shots of the Rosia valley won't realize the hills hide a huge, abandoned communist-era mine, leaking toxic heavy metals into local streams--or that while the modern mining project will level four hills to create an open pit, it will also clean up the old mess at no cost to the Romanian treasury.
Another documentary about the same mine, Mine Your Own Business, presents another angle. They say the biggest threat to the people of Rosia Montana "comes from upper-class Western environmentalism that seeks to keep them poor and unable to clean up the horrific pollution caused by Ceausescu's mining":
Local unemployed miner Gheorghe Lucian says it best: "People have no food to eat. . . . I know what I need--a job." Mr. Soros's Romanian Open Society Foundation is touting "alternative economic activities such as organic agriculture and eco-tourism," unrealistic at best.
Read more about both films here.
Stephen Smith | August 21, 2007, 1:17pm | #
I lived in Romania a couple years ago when the government was deciding whether to allow the project to go forward, and I have to say, despite generally believing that the project would be good for the people of the area, I was absolutely sickened by the techniques used by Gabriel Mining (or whatever it was called). They spend an enormous amount of money to ship peasants in from the area to give these ridiculous speeches about the benefits of the mine. The peasants, who probably couldn't even read, were spouting their talking points in a way that would make even Hillary Clinton a little queasy. I was at one of those meetings in Bucharest, and it made me a whole lot more pessimistic about the future of my mother's country. They even paid doctors to leave the village, so that peasants would begin to leave, so they could bolster their claims that the village was in steep decline, anyway.
Finally, let's evaluate the mining company's claims about the area: namely, that they will bring jobs. Who will these jobs go to? Certainly not the people of Rosia Montana, most of whom are poor Roma ("gypsies" to the less politically correct) who have lived all their lives on government handouts and, I can tell you from experience, will NOT be able to work in these jobs. The kind of mining they were going to do was going to be undertaken by a very small number of highly-trained specialists, most likely carted in from Australia, where the company is based -- not the sort of job that domnul Gheorghe Lucian would be qualified to do.
In the end, the net benefit to the Romanian government in taxes (thanks to the huge tax abatements the area received due to its squalor) was very, very small. So, let's recap: no actual jobs for the people, very little money to the Romanian government, and the destruction of some very old Roman ruins. Not to mention the huge environmental damage that's come out of previous projects by the same company (or, rather, holding company -- Gabriel, I believe, was a company created solely for this project). The Romanian government is not known for its environmental stewardship, and I can guarantee you that when the Hungarian government sues over the evironmental damage caused by cyanide mining, the case is going to be laughed out of court but a Romanian judge while he drives away in his BMW that some kind gentleman offered him for a mere $5000.
By the way, I wonder, who financed "Mine Your Own Business"? Well, it seems to be the marketing geniuses at Gabriel (and let me tell you, they ARE geniuses)! But wait, there's more -- what innocuous-looking organizations do you think lent their credibility to it, so that the people at Gabriel could say, "Oh, we had no control over it"? An Australian thinktank! (One guess as to where Gabriel is incorporated. I'll give you a hint: it starts with an A and ends with an ustralia.) Who, interestingly enough, happens to trade in global warming denial.
And don't for a second think that the politicians (Romanian senators are elected by a list -- meaning no one has any clue who they are, nor did they directly elect them, and they are accountable to no one except their parties) weren't bribed or sweet-talked into supporting this deals. Everything in Romania reeks of corruption -- take a further look and you'll see that this isn't a case of bonafide free-marketers against the effete liberals at Greenpeace. Don't be taken for fools: one libertarian cog in a Soviet-era combine doesn't mean the combine is suddenly worth more than the sum of its low-grade parts.
Stephen Smith | August 21, 2007, 1:58pm | #
I'm not a professional activist – in fact, I went into those meetings siding with the mining company, and came out disgusted and shamed.
As for the comment about the doctors, in the free market, to people usually pay people extravagant prices NOT to perform services? Sounds a lot like an agricultural subsidy to me. And no, no doctor will move to this town, seeing as how it's been branded for destruction by the mining company.
And no, the miners will NOT come out with jobs. They only experience they have is with inefficient communist-era mines -- not the experience to use high-tech machinery (which, mostly, requires English language skills...which I promise you these people did not have). They were trained in a communist "job market," and as you know, these skills are often NOT transferable into the real job market.
And finally, no, I wouldn't call global warming denialists Nazis, just liars. And while this happens to have little to do with global warming, all I'm saying is that I wouldn't exactly trust their analysis of the environmental impact on the project. Which wouldn't normally be an issue, because normally one reads Consumer Reports, not watches an informercial (which is exactly what "Mine Your Own Business" is -- an infomercial commissioned by the company that has the most to gain, and backed by an organization that similarly has a lot to gain).
To frame it in a libertarian context: in the free market, pollution wouldn't be an issue because those who caused the pollution would be sued in court. In Romania, this simply does not happen. There are no impartial arbiters. Therefore, as imperfect as it might be, it's generally a good idea to have someone looking out for these sorts of interests (at least until everyone alive in Romania in 1989 dies and the country can finally shed its communist legacy and move the fuck on).
Stephen Smith | August 21, 2007, 4:47pm | #
Stupid me, I bet the poor people would rather starve than have a yucky mine in their town.
And yet, that's hardly the tradeoff. Firstly, there's no starvation in Romania -- it's not that poor. Lack of heated water, 21st century medical care, and 21st century communication devices, maybe. But lack of food, no way in hell. You've undermined your argument by exaggeration (and yet, for some reason I'll continue to debunk it). With the coming of the mine, most of the infrastructure/structures in the town would be destroyed. Rather than rebuild, these people are far more likely to migrate to nearby urban centers. Which, interestingly enough, they have the choice of doing even without the mine.
I'm sure they are untrainable as well.
Of course they're trainable. The question, however, isn't whether or not they are ABLE to be trained, but rather, are they ABLE to be trained more cheaply than it would cost to bring in some experts from Bucharest/Texas/Canada/Australia. The answer to that question is, obviously, no.
I bet they don't understand democracy, either. Probably Muslims.
Okay, cute rhetorical talking point. If you happen to have huge breasts and like being talked down to by creepy old men, I think there's an opening on The O'Reilly Factor. If you don't have huge breasts, try his radio show.
You completely ignore the arguments of the majority of the local population.
No, I don't. I'm simply stating that they've been duped with Madison Ave marketing. What they believe is simply wrong, in my opinion -- the mine will not bring permanent jobs, the mine will not be environmentally friendly. Legitimate free-market exchanges require both the buyer and seller to know what they're getting out of a deal -- these villagers don't have a clue.
...okay, I could go through every sentence of what you wrote and debunk it, but I think I'll stop there. This isn't me vs. capitalism...this is me vs. government-sponsored pseudo-statism: the state deciding what areas and projects deserve development, and then handing out subsidies to companies that do business there. Don't get me wrong -- there is no future in Roşia Montană for its present-day inhabitants. But the place should die a dignified free-market death of attrition and emigration, not be sold to some company for a pittance, razed, and pumped full of cyanide.
...finally, as for you doubting that what I say about being intimately knowledgeable of this story, să nu mai vorbeşti despre lucruri despre care habar nu ai. Go look that up in a Romanian dictionary.
Emil | August 23, 2007, 8:29am | #
Stephen Smith: not extremely polite, are you ?
"să nu mai vorbeşti despre lucruri despre care habar nu ai"
Translation: "you should not talk about what you don't know"
some details about Rosia Montana:
- mining settlement since the Roman times, about 1900 years ago
- mining was done with every known technology, including those using mercury
- illiterate peasants ? the people that lived in Rosia Montana were trained miners brought in from all over the country; anyway, I have failed to meet an illiterate person in the bureaucratic Rumania up to now: if you can't read and write, you f***** die. What the natives call "illiterate" are those that failed to grasp all the intricate grammar rules of a language artificially build out of about 5 related dialects. In Rumania Stephen Smith would qualify as "illiterate".
Dan T. : "So at least the people stealing the natural resources " ...
Nobody is stealing natural resources: the gold of the area was mined for almost 2000 years, what is left is low grade minerals that cannot be exploited with any other technologies. Also, Gabriel won't make it with the gold on the international markets: all the gold mined in Rumania (not a lot of gold) is sold to the government at fixed prices.
" ... huge, abandoned communist-era mine, leaking toxic heavy metals into local streams ..."
That's a volcanic area, and the sterile piles gathered there during centuries of gold mining and the natural cracks in the rocks leak heavy metals and other minerals into the local streams all the time. This happens in other areas of volcanic origin which were not yet mined, and there the water is called "mineral" and sold in bottles or used for "cures". You know, humans need a small amount of "heavy metals", otherwise they get sick and die.
tarran: "The mountain appears to be owned by the government, who stole it from whomever owned it before."
The mountain was never privately owned: any government that got in control of the area owned the mountain and sold mining permits.
"50 years of Socialist rule which taught them to be totally dependent on government."
Socialist rule teaches you only two things: how to exploit the government if possible, and how to avoid it if necessary.
Rosia Montana is a mining town, not a village (being a town or a village in Rumania is only an administrative issue: most of US towns would qualify as villages, and all the suburbanites would be classified as villagers if Rumanian rules would apply). Rosia Montana has suffered cycles of boom and bust, and will probably see other in the future.
I am skeptical about the "dangers" of open pit mining. I have seen a town where uranium was mined during the '50s: Gârda, some 150 - 200 km from Rosia Montana. You have to know a town was there to see what was left of the buildings, the piles of sterile powder, the excavated area and the roads under the vegetation that grew since it was abandoned. If you don't know where to look, you might mistake it for a "pristine" area.
There are two new films out on a contested gold mine in Romania, one airing on PBS tonight. Rosia Montana, a rural Transylvanian town (pictured right, in all of its glory), sits on top of $10 billion in gold.