Switzerland’s Medel Valley contains gold ore worth an estimated $1.2 billion, but residents soundly rejected a proposal to mine the deposits, despite the community’s need for jobs.
But at a time when Europe is in the grip of the worst recession since World War II, a cluster of villages in Switzerland has rebuffed the chance to reap the benefits of the gold deposits buried underfoot.
The villages voted in a referendum this month to block a Canadian mining company from mining an estimated $1.2 billion worth of gold ore believed to be underneath the pine forests and snow-capped peaks of the picturesque Medel Valley (see map here). It would have been the country’s first gold mine and one of only a handful in Europe.
Royalties from the mine would have guaranteed the five tiny villages and hamlets of the valley an income of around 40 million Swiss francs ($43.5 million) over the next 10 years – the kind of money that many towns and cities in Europe, forced to make savage cuts to public services to chip away at government debt, would have been glad to accept.
But the promised bonanza was not enough to sway the majority of the Medel Valley’s 450 inhabitants. With more than 80 percent of eligible voters turning out to vote, two-thirds of them were implacably opposed to the project, which would have lasted at least a decade.
The proposed mine sharply divided the inhabitants of the valley, which is dotted with centuries-old timber barns and onion-domed churches, and surrounded by sheer-sided mountains. Proponents say it would have provided much-needed money and jobs to a community struggling with an aging population and an exodus of its young people, who have to leave to find employment.
But those opposed to the project worry about the impact it would have, both on the environment and on the valley’s well-preserved culture.
Best of Luck to the Swiss. Their children LEAVE (and don’t came back) because there’s NO Work, and modern mining can be VERY meticulous, and ore-processing could be done away from the villages/villages’ water supplies, so I almost think their brains have turned to “aged Swiss cheese” to turn-down a REAL gold-mine to augment the Vaults of Geneva. I HOPE my town would NOT be so ignorant and short-sighted, imo. If I was pushing the mine, I’d pare-back the city benefits in lieu of profit-sharing to each and every resident, so each one would become RICH, within the life of the mine.
If given solely to the villagers, they’d earn almost 97,000.00 Euros each. That’s a LOT of the best cattle, goats, and forests, plus all of the mining facility could be carved OUT of the mountainside, so unless they were thinking of open-pit mining, shafts could go for miles hundreds of feet UNDER land now used for agriculture, so the sylvan property of the villages would ONLY be disturbed by trucks going back and forth.
I’m not surprised. The Swiss take lots of things seriously, and why not have the electorate make the decisions, directly, without a politician involved?
Don’t forget, that many of the residents are rich anyway, compared to most people in the world.
It shows maturity in my view. We don’t need the money. If they need it in the future, they can always change their minds
You’re right. There are many who are very well-off already, but if they were so “well-off”, WHY wouldn’t they WANT their children next-door, because if one’s “going for life-style”, WHAT could be BETTER than working alongside your kids, so your values continue? Maybe the Swiss children of those villages are going-out to earn & Learn, THEN to return. Maybe with rich mines, would appear Terror to take the riches, and with riches un-developed, there’s no “honey” for “flies.” and the kids going out will have something AWESOME and unspoiled…to return to,–their parents.
Switzerland is the most Leftist-green nation in the European Eunion.