Rosia Montana Town, made up of 16 villages that dot the slopes along the river Rosia in western Romania, has hundred-year-old churches and houses, cemeteries and ancient Roman mine galleries.
It also has gold, but for those who live here, that is more of a bane than anything else.
Canada’s Gabriel Resources wants to build Europe’s largest open cast gold mine in Rosia Montana, a 15-year quest that has put the area at the center of a national debate between heritage and development.
The mine could bring billions of euros in taxes and potentially thousands of jobs to an economically depressed region, but it will also require blasting four mountain tops, relocating the community and flooding one village to create a 300 hectare pond for chemical waste held back by a 180m high dam.
The mine has the support of most of the 2,800 locals, the mayor and county administration and Romanian President Traian Basescu.
Those who oppose the project — a handful of residents, several church, environmental and human rights groups, the Soros Foundation and Hungary, which fears the consequences of any environmental damage — want to turn the area into a UNESCO heritage site focused on tourism and farming.
Critics are concerned that concession rights were awarded without transparency and without exploring other options.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta, a political opponent of Basescu, has openly criticized both the plan and the president’s support, and the topic will be a focus of debate in the run-up to a November parliamentary election.
The issue also cuts to the heart of Romania’s economic problems, as the EU’s second-poorest nation struggles to take advantage of its resources and strategic location between western Europe and the Middle East.
“Basically it’s a choice between two world views set around the question of how we see Rosia Montana and Romania’s future in five, 50 or 500 years,” said Magor Csibi, country manager at the Romanian arm of environmental group WWF.
“It’s a war of nerves,” Csibi said. “Whoever lasts longest wins.”
Countless court cases challenging the permits are pending, as are many appeals by the company.
Stuck in the middle, with no other source of employment, the community is slowly dying out. The villages lack central heating or running water and infrastructure is decaying, while previous mines have polluted the water.
Most locals hope Gabriel Resources’ Romanian unit, Rosia Montana Gold Corp (RMGC), will restore jobs and the economy.
The town is in the Golden Quadrilateral, an area of about 900 square kilometers which holds one of Europe’s largest gold reserves and is also rich in copper and silver.
However, after the 1989 collapse of communism, Romania was left with an inefficient, heavily subsidized mining sector that employed hundreds of thousands and scarred the environment. It closed hundreds of mines and sacked workers. The government estimates it still needs 1 billion euros (US$1.2 billion) for ecological repairs.
Many people left Rosia Montana. Others sold their properties to RMGC and moved to modern houses the firm built in the town of Alba Iulia, 80km away.
Eugen David, a former copper miner who moved to Rosia Montana about 17 years ago when he met his wife owns land on top of one of RMGC’s planned quarries and where it aims to build a processing plant, and says he will give it up only by force.
As the head of an anti-mine organization his alternative to the mine is farming and using Rosia Montana’s notoriety to attract tourists.
However, the area is difficult to get to and has little tourism infrastructure in spite of its natural beauty and mining heritage.
“If it goes forward it will destroy this community. There will be no more mountains. The company will relocate 1,000 families. How is that good for the community?” David asked.
RMGC, in which the Romanian state holds a 19 percent stake, started exploration work in Rosia Montana in 1997 and secured concession rights two years later. Opponents are angry that parts of the agreement are confidential under the country’s natural resources legislation.
RMGC estimates the mine to be worth US$7.5 billion and that the state would get more than half of that in royalties, taxes, dividends and indirect services, based on a 2007 study that used an average price of US$900 per ounce of gold. The Romanian Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Business Environment approved the study without conducting an independent survey.
Gabriel’s chief executive said the mine could be worth up to US$30 billion at current prices of roughly US$1,600 per ounce, and the mine would make Romania the EU’s largest gold producer, overtaking Finland, Sweden and Spain.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”