The current paper presents a review of last twenty years of main mining activities, carried out in the Baia Mare area. Details of the mining activity carried out by the former Romanian state company in partnership with the Australian company Esmeralda are also included, extensively dealing with the circumstances of the cyanide spill in 2000.
The disaster of the Baia Mare mining project led to a review of European environmental legislation, in the coming years. Romaltyn's current proposal announces, as Esmeralda’s did 18 years ago, the use of the latest technology that complies with European standards. The present reality is, however, considerably different from that of the 1990s, when civil society not yet consolidated, when there was no precedent known as dangerous, when local authorities were entirely serviced to mining operators.
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