{"id":11771,"date":"2015-09-03T07:27:46","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T12:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11771"},"modified":"2015-09-03T07:27:46","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T12:27:46","slug":"for-the-love-of-water-el-salvadors-mining-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11771","title":{"rendered":"For the Love of Water: El Salvador\u2019s Mining Ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the Love of Water: El Salvador\u2019s Mining Ban<\/a><\/h3>\n

For some time now, U.S. and Canadian mining companies have been seeking out new mining sites in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. This is partly because high-grade ores that are easily accessible in the U.S. and Canada are in the process of being used up. It is also due to expensive litigation and mitigation costs that mining companies must undertake in developed countries. Not long ago, Salvadorans welcomed foreign owned mining companies into their country. Yet for the last several years, metal mining has been banned in El Salvador by presidential decree and citizen groups are now working to enact a permanent nationwide ban on such undertaking.<\/p>\n

With six million people, El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, as well as the most\u00a0water-scarce<\/a>. It also is one of the most environmentally degraded countries in Latin America. A period of rapid urbanization and industrialization in the 1990s\u00a0deprived<\/a>\u00a0the country of about 20 percent of its subsurface water. Today, over 90 percent of its surface water is contaminated with industrial chemicals, making it\u00a0unsuitable<\/a>\u00a0to drink even if the water is boiled, chlorinated or filtered beforehand.<\/p>\n

In order to extract tiny particles of gold, mining companies have to apply a leaching process that involves the use of cyanide and enormous amounts of water. As\u00a0NACLA<\/a>\u00a0reported in 2011, \u201cthe average metallic mine uses 24,000 gallons of water per hour, or about what a typical Salvadoran family consumes in 20 years.\u201d In less developed countries where regulatory agencies are weak and water scarce, then metal mining can have serious public health and environmental consequences.<\/p>\n

Back in 1992, after a lengthy and devastating civil war, reformed-minded Salvadorans were eager to rebuild their conflicted ravaged country. In the years that followed, the rate of economic growth was well above the\u00a0average<\/a>\u00a0for Latin American countries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the Love of Water: El Salvador\u2019s Mining Ban For some time now, U.S. and Canadian mining companies have been seeking out new mining sites in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. This is partly because high-grade ores that are easily accessible in the U.S. and Canada are in the process of being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[103,5493,8651,8649,8652,1176,1482,8650,8653,834,866],"class_list":["post-11771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-canada","tag-counterpunch","tag-developing-world","tag-el-salvador","tag-environmental-mitigation","tag-latin-america","tag-mining","tag-mining-ban","tag-mining-toxins","tag-us","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11772,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11771\/revisions\/11772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}