Waste Management Outlook for Mountain Regions

CASE STUDY

The highest inhabited village in the world is a mining village

La Rinconada is a town that clings to the side of a mountain in southeastern Peru. At 5100 m it is famous for being the highest settlement in the world, but it is also becoming increasingly well known for being one of the most dangerous places to live. Estimates of the population vary between 30,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, all of whom are there because of gold - people have been mining gold in the mountains since the Incas (Wade 2013, Finnegan 2015). Despite the large population there is no sewage system, no organized waste management, no running water and no paved roads (Arana 2012). The people are desperately poor despite the area yielding more than $400 million worth of gold a year (Arana 2012). La Rinconada is not a company town built to service an international mining operation, instread it supports informal unregulated mining that relies on mercury to process the gold. The miners dig ore from the mountains and then grind

it, addingmercury to forma gold –mercury amalgam. They dump the contaminated waste water and sediment. The amalgam is then taken to one of the more than 250 gold shops in the town, where it is heated to release the gold. The process is inefficient, sending mercury vapour into the atmosphere, which aided by the cold eventually precipitates adding to the load of mercury entering waterways (Fraser 2011). A study of the air quality in and around La Rinconada’s gold shops, suggested that they could be emitting as much as 20 metric tons of mercury per year (Wade 2013). Information on the impact of mercury exposure to the community is lacking, but there is ample evidence from other artisanal mining communities that these high levels of mercury will be causing widespread irreparable health problems to both children and adults, including neurological, kidney and possibly immunotoxic/autoimmune effects (Gibb and O’Leary 2014).

Miners heading up to the La Rinconada tunnels in the high mountains tramp on polluted slush flowing from the mines and pass mounds of rubbish. Photo © Gina Nemirofsky

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