Canada’s Alamos Gold (TSX, NYSE:
AGI) reacted on Wednesday to an unusually large protest against its Kirazli project,
triggered by the miner allegedly exceeding the number of trees to cut declared
in an environmental impact report, saying it had paid for future reforestation
of the site in advance.
Alamos chief executive officer,
John McCluskey, also denied claims that cyanide use in ore processing would
leak into the surrounding area, part of a forestry reserve, adding that
opposition against the gold project in western Turkey was based on
politically-motivated misinformation.
Thousands of Turks including
opposition lawmakers staged a peaceful and massive protests on Monday on
news that Alamos Gold’s local subsidiary, Dogu Biga Mining, had supposedly cut down
four times the number of trees allowed by the government.
The country’s authorities had allowed the clear-cut of roughly 45,000 trees, but reduced that number considerably after consulting a July study. The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion or TEMA, however, recently published images obtained with the help of satellite imagery showing what it is supposed to be evidence of Alamos’ removal of at least 200,000 trees.
“As part of the forestry permit, we
have paid about $5 million (and) a big component of that fee is to pay for
reforestation,” McCluskey told Reuters, adding that only government
authorities were allowed to cut trees, not the company.
“In six and a half years, the whole
focus of this area will be to replant. And in a decade, maybe a bit more than
that, it will look like a forest again,” he said.
Opponents also fear the mine will
have a devastating environmental impact on area, part of the biodiversity-rich Ida
mountain range, and contaminate the local fresh water supply. The Kirazli gold project
is located just 14 km. (9 miles) from Atikhisar reservoir, the region’s biggest
fresh water source.
McCluskey said that while cyanide
will be used on site, it will only be added in the final step of the extraction
process, adding that Alamos had taken measures to ensure there would be no impact
in the area.
“There has been very deliberate misinformation about this project that is being published in an effort to get very rapidly a very emotive social media response,” he noted.
Twelve days ago, about 300 people
set up a protest camp near the cordoned off mine construction site. And that
number keeps growing. Thanks the Twitter hashtag #kazdaginadokunma (“Don’t
touch my Ida mountains”) the group has so far gotten more than 10,000 supporters
of their cause.
When built, the Kirazli gold mine
is expected to produce an average of 104,000 ounces at all-in sustaining costs
of $373 per ounce over a five-year mine life.
Alamos currently has two operating
mines in Canada (Young-Davidson and Island Gold in northern Ontario), and two
mines in Mexico (Mulatos and El Chanate, both in Sonora state).
(With files from Reuters)