Case Study: Guadiamar River
On April 25, 1998 At the Los Frailes Mine, owned by the Swedish/Canadian Company Boliden, The dam burst which was holding back the toxic mining waste. Boliden claim that this was due to Seismic shift but other people said that local authorities have received warnings that the Dam was unstable and likely to break. The Wave contained approximately 5 cubic metres of Toxic sludge including the poisonous lead, arsenic, zinc and mercury. The sludge flowed into the Guadiamar River, the marshlands and the Intramurals. The toxins destroyed all life in the stretch of the river. The river of Sludge was finally stopped at the entrance to Doñana National Park, thanks to the hasty construction of an emergency Dam. There were then huge delays due to the inefficiency of the public administrations board and a lack of a driving political force. The cleaning up project finally started at the beginning of the year 2000. The job was a massive 6000 contaminated hectares. The waste has been replaced at the mine with permission from the Geomining institute of Spain. The project has come under scrutiny from the WWF for using methods which it did not approve of and it has recorded mutations of certain animals in The Doñana National Park. Many Wildlife organizations want the mine shut down permanently.
