Illegal expansion of a dam caused the landslide in a gold mine
in northwestern Shaanxi Province, the local government
announced Sunday.
The Zhen'an County Gold Mining Co. Ltd., owner of the mine, has
been raising the height of the dam without official authorization
since the company was established in 1993, increasing the capacity
of the dam from 300,000 cubic meters to nearly 1 million cubic
meters, said Ma Yanping, deputy director of the provincial
administration on production safety.
"The blind expansion led to part of the dam collapsing when it
was undergoing its sixth heightening project," said Ma, adding that
they found both designers and builders on the expansion project had
been working without official licenses.
Seventeen people are still missing from the accident that
happened on April 30 in Zhen'an County and they are unlikely to
survive. The accident occurred at 6.40?PM when the dam
collapsed and a large amount of gold ore tailings buried about 40
rooms of nine households, leaving 17 residents missing and five
others injured.
The missing people were possibly buried under ore tailings and
the remainder of the dam is unstable which is hindering rescue
work, said Ma.
More than 130 local residents have been evacuated from the site
of the accident and resettled elsewhere.
The local government has taken emergency measures to prevent the
poisonous content in the tailings, including sodium cyanide, from
polluting the environment. Further investigation into the cause of
the accident is underway.
The county-level Gold Mining Co. Ltd. has a daily processing
capacity of 500 tons of gold ores.
(Xinhua News Agency May 8, 2006)