Eldorado transplants environmental know-how to Mexico, Brazil and Turkey

Through careful reclamation procedures at its two open-pit heap-leach gold mines in Mexico, Eldorado has continued to demonstrate high environmental standards.

In October 1998, the Vancouver-based company discontinued operations at its La Trinidad mine in Sinaloa state. Reclamation involved stocking the pit lake with fish and re-vegetating the mine site area with native and fruit-bearing species of trees and shrubs. Also, Eldorado donated the mine camp buildings, well and water system to the communities of Maloya and Buena Vista.

A similar program was carried out at the La Colorada mine, near the town on Hermosillo. Commissioned in 1993, the mine processed about 9,000 tonnes of ore daily and utilized a Merrill-Crowe recovery circuit. About 30% of the ore was treated as run-of-mine and dumped directly on to the leach pads. The rest was crushed in a 2-stage crushing plant to minus 3/4 mesh. Currently, Eldorado is attempting to expand reserves at the site.

Eldorado has donated 64 ha of land next to the village of La Colorada for use as an industrial park. In addition, the company has cleaned up all mine tailings left by previous mine operators. Efforts are under way to improve the condition of village houses and transform one of the pits into a park.

In 1997, the staff at La Colorada transplanted in excess of 3,700 plants in areas that had been disturbed by exploration drilling and mining operations. The work also included the re-filling of exploration drill holes and trenches near the mine. The final dump reclamation was initiated in late 1997 along the South waste dump, and included contouring, placement of topsoil and re-vegetation.

A lot of the species transplanted to the dump-site were grown in the mine’s own plant nursery. Eldorado even raised and transplanted the rare ironwood trees and guayacan species of cacti.

Meanwhile, at the Sao Bento gold mine in Brazil, Eldorado is refining and developing environmental safeguards. The mine maintains a greenhouse in order to cultivate native species for reclamation and is currently re-vegetating several areas of prior disturbance.