Deal #8607

A spokesperson for the village chief of Kolia, Khalifa Dansokho, pointing to places polluted by AfriGold, said: “The company has installed a pumping station by the river. The water is piped to the plant for gold washing. On the other side, Afrigold uses a reverse path across the river to dispose of the waste water. The level of this waste water is filled with mud and can reach a depth of two meters. And that becomes dangerous for people and animals. Some wild and domestic animals have perished in this muddy river as they try to reach the other side of the river. It took the youth of the village of Kolia to rise up for Afrigold to build a bridge to allow the villagers to cross.” The people of Kolia accuse mining company AfriGold of being one of the biggest polluters of the Falémé. AfriGold’s head of administration, Bara Diallo, dodged the issue and explained: “We have not reached the cyanidation phase (a hydro-metallurgical technique for extracting gold using a solution of alkaline cyanides). Afrigold is in the expansion phase. We are not yet using chemicals. What we practice is a form of gold panning on a large scale. We use a gravitation system that only washes and grinds the ore.” And he added: “There is a system that allows us to transport the water. This water travels a long way to allow the heavy particles to settle in certain places. The water that goes back into the Falémé is actually clean water.”