Colombia, South America, is a poor country with a history of violence and political instability but also is a very rich land, full of good and hopeful people. Is in the northeast part of Colombia, region of Santander, where GREYSTAR RESOURCES is on the first steps of “Angostura Project”, a deeply damaging seek for gold in a very valuable area called Páramo Santurbán.

Santurbán is a High plateau located in the Eastern Cordillera at 3.000 meters above the sea, its main characteristic is that this is the born place of a the major portion from the consumed water in Bucaramanga, a city with 1.200.000 inhabitants. As is well known, gold extraction requires Cyanide, a deathly substance that will be drunk by the pointed population. But also GREYSTAR is going to explode the gold with an opencast mine. This modality is the most prejudicial of all.

There are plenty of information and studies about this topic, and every one of them coincides in one point: is extremely harmful for the environment and the humans. The last of a long list of papers regarding that kind of mining was published by Science Magazine on January 7th 2010 under this title: “Mountaintop Mining Consequences”. It was written by an exceptional group of scientists and declares that:

“Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses. (…) we conclude that MTM/VF (Mountaintop Mining with Valley Fills) permits should not be granted unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems. Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science.” ¹

Nevertheless, the Colombian Government is about to give permit for this malevolent exploitation. This is the most expected course of action for a government without any sense of sovereignty and self-respect, a government who watches for the interests of the transnational companies and forgets the Colombian people and the whole planet.
As we already told, Colombia suffers violence since a long time ago, and Greystar Resources is taking advantage of it. Everyone against this ecocide is subject to menaces, threats and attacks.
We, the people of the world, are asking for your solidarity, please write to the Canadian government and the Canadian media, the massive and the alternative one.

Bucaramanga, November 23th 2010.

COMITÉ EN DEFENSA DEL AGUA DEL ÁREA METROPOLITANA DE BUCARAMANGA

COMITÉ EN DEFENSA DEL PÁRAMO SANTURBÁN.

Notes

1. M. A. Palmer, E. S. Bernhardt, W. H. Schlesinger, K. N. Eshleman, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, M. S. Hendryx, A. D. Lemly, G. E. Likens, O. L. Loucks, M. E. Power, P. S. White, P. R. Wilcock . Mountaintop Mining Consequences. SCIENCE. 8 JANUARY 2010, VOL 327. P. 148-149.