Gold cyanidation in Romania


Gold cyanidation in Romania was used for decades, but the process came into debate following the 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill and proposal of the Roșia Montană Project, which would create the largest operation for gold extraction using cyanides in Europe.

Exploitation projects

Currently, there is no exploitation project active, but there is one that has its operations suspended temporarily and there are two proposed projects. Previously, there were also exploitations in Baia de Arieș, Sasar, Suior, Cavnic, Băița, Băiuț.
There are some ongoing explorations projects operated by Eldorado Gold in Brad, Deva and Muncel, in addition to the company's new intended exploitation in Certej.

Ban attempts

In 2005, a number of 12 Greater Romania Party Senators proposed a law project which banned the usage of cyanides for gold and silver extraction in Roșia Montană. The law was rejected in the Senate in November 2005 and in the Chamber of Deputies in March 2006. The government also opposed it arguing that the law referred to a special case.
A year later, Funar and Peter Eckstein of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, usually bitter rivals in the political scene of Cluj, created a new law which was more general and avoided to talk about Roșia Montană. The project was nevertheless rejected in the autumn of 2008, meeting the opposition of the Democratic-Liberal Party.
A third attempt to ban gold cyanidation was registered in the Senate in June 2013, proposed by non-affiliated deputy Remus Cernea, being supported by other 38 senators and deputies of all parties, many of which from the government coalition. The only MP from the Democratic-Liberal Party to support the law was the deputy Teodor Paleologu.

Disasters

The 1971 Certej dam failure led to the deaths of 89 people after a failure of the dam of the tailings pond.
The 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill occurred when a dam holding 100,000 tonnes of cyanide-contaminated tailings spilled into the Someș River and from there into the Tisza and Danube. The spill created a large-scale environmental disaster that has been called the worst environmental disaster in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster.