Sunday, April 8, 2012

Swiss village in Alpine valley votes to turns its back on $1.2 billion goldmine

It was not a question many villagers will ever have to face - and theirs was an answer that even fewer would probably give.

But when residents of a remote Alpine valley were offered a share of a fortune that would have brought them tens of millions of pounds, they said "No".

Swiss banks may be bulging with gold ingots, but the inhabitants of a cluster of villages in the Medel Valley have shown themselves less than keen to dig the stuff out of their own mountains.

After months of anguished debate, the villagers voted in a referendum last week to stop a Canadian mining company prospecting for the estimated $1.2 billion worth of gold ore believed to be lie in seams beneath the surrounding snow-capped mountains.
It would have been Switzerland's first gold mine and one of only a handful in Europe but locals ran scared of the prospect of turning their valley into a miniature version of the Klondike.

In doing so they rejected a windfall of around 40 million Swiss francs (£27 million) over the next 10 years – a veritable bonanza for the 450 inhabitants of the picturesque valley.

More @ The Telegraph

3 comments:

  1. All that glitters is not gold but at over $1700 an ounce they could have bought a whole bunch of those other things that glitter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Intrigued me so much that I checked the place out. Talk about leaving your cares behind if you already had a stable income.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, I believe it is not nice to dig under a huge rock piece above your head. Besides, it won't be the ordinary people who will get the money, but the investors- we all know that.

    Greets,
    Holiday Rentals Saas Fee

    ReplyDelete