The Greek government has sold off new mining
concessions in the north of the country as a way of reducing its debt.
But the inhabitants, though hit hard by unemployment, are wary of the
environmental consequences of the big dig.

“There, you see? That’s where they want to dig the hole.”
Lazaros Toskas points his finger at the top of the mountain. Up there,
amid forests of oak, beech and pine, a mining company, Hellas Gold,
plans to excavate an immense pit to extract the treasure hidden in the
bowels of Mount Kakavos in Skouries.
The wealth of this corner of Chalkidiki in northern Greece has been
known of for millennia: copper, silver, lead, zinc – and especially
gold, which has quadrupled in value over the past 10 years. But where
some see business and job opportunities in a land awash in unemployment,
others fear the destruction of an ecosystem by an urge to develop,
driven by the economic crisis, that they mistrust.
Toskas is a 54-year-old civil engineer. He lives in Megali Panagia,
the town closest to the proposed Skouries mine, and is one of the
leaders of the movement against the project that has organised several
protests in recent months. The engineer shows the work that has already
been done for water drainage: “They have to hollow out the mountain to
build the galleries.” Under the open pit, which will be up to 250 metres
deep, tunnels will be driven up to 700 metres down. The population
fears for the water in the area. “There are a lot of minerals in the
ground, and they include high percentages of arsenic. We don’t know what
can happen,” says a worried Toskas. The subject of arsenic often comes
up in the talk of those who oppose the mine. The process the company
wants to use to extract the gold, they say, is not feasible on a site
with high concentrations of arsenic.

Eduardo Moura, vice president of Eldorado Gold (the Canadian mining
giant, which owns 95 per cent of Hellas Gold), responds by e-mail: the
company, he writes, operates in strict compliance with European and
Greek environmental regulation. “The environmental impact study of the
Chalkidiki mine,” he adds, “has taken five years to be prepared,
reviewed and approved by the Greek state.” As for the production
process, the company claims to have made “tests that prove it can be
used successfully.”
“I’m neither for or against,” says the owner of a jewellery store in
Ierissos, the tourist centre of Halkidiki that has become the
headquarters of the protest against the mine. “But I would prefer to see
jobs coming from somewhere else.” The jeweller sums up the worries of
the people, and even of those who, like him, have not marched in
demonstrations. “The water we drink comes from the mountain. If it gets
contaminated, what will we do?” Then there is tourism. “Do you think
anyone would come if he knew there was a mine just a few kilometres
away?” He assures us that understands the worries of the unemployed;
it’s employment that is the main dividing line between backers and
opponents of the project. The company does already employ 1,100 workers,
and, explains Moura, “our operations will create more than 5,000 direct
and indirect jobs.”
Many, however, believe that the benefits will not outweigh the risks,
and they distrust the official line. To explain why, they point to the
way the state grossly undersold the exploitation rights to the mining
project in a region of northern Greece that has metal reserves worth
about €20bn euros.

In December 2003, the Greek government took control of the mine after
an out-of-court settlement with TVX Hellas, the former owner, which
shut down the project because of the protests from the locals. The state
bought it for €11m and sold it the same day for the same amount to
Hellas Gold, founded three days earlier, ceding the company all rights
to exploitation. Shortly thereafter, 95 per cent of the company’s shares
were acquired by a Canadian company, European Goldfields (EG). The
market value of the company was then estimated in an audit to be about
€400m. In 2012, Eldorado took over EG.
The company defends the project, claiming that “it has all the
necessary environmental permits.” But groups opposing the mine have
appealed against the environmental impact study to the Greek Council of
State, which has still to hand down its final ruling.
“Here, between 1947 and 1949 the major battles of the civil war were
fought out,” says unemployed Yorgos Tarazas, who has been in the front
lines of the protests against the project. Some have ended in violent
clashes with the police. Once, last summer, after a pitched battle on
the mountain, the riot police retreated back into the centre of
Ierissos, where they charged and used tear gas. “Some of us had only
ever seen the riot police on TV,” says Tarazas.