In El Salvador, A River Without Fish Feeds Fear Of Mining

Faizan Hashmi Published March 06, 2025 | 11:40 AM

Santa Rosa de Lima, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Mar, 2025) El Salvador's San Sebastian river has no fish. The runoff from a gold mine upstream, already shuttered two decades ago, has long killed them all.

Now, residents fear the same fate for other rivers -- and the creatures and people depending on them -- after Congress, at President Nayib Bukele's request, reversed a ban on metal mining.

Bukele billed the move as a way of invigorating the Central American country's stagnant economy, but environmentalists and river-side communities fear the potential harms far outweigh any benefits.

In the community of Santa Rosa de Lima, a two-hour drive from the capital San Salvador, wastewater still flows directly into the San Sebastian river from a nearby hill where a gold mine operated for 100 years until 2006.

The site is still being illegally exploited by artisanal gold miners.

On a recent expedition to survey the river with a group of environmentalists, community leader Graciela Funes took a sample of the water and shook her head as she examined its unnatural copper color.

"We cannot allow this situation... We are human and we all need this vital liquid," the 67-year-old told AFP.

In 2016, a report by El Salvador's human rights ombudsman found that runoff from Santa Rosa de Lima's shuttered mine had "severely impacted the quality and availability" of water in the region.

People who relied directly on the river had no option but to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking, it said.

The report contributed to El Salvador becoming the first country in the world, in 2017, to outlaw metal mining due to the harmful effects of chemicals such as cyanide and mercury used in the extraction process.