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Defunct gold mine in Mexico From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
El Chanate is a former gold mine in Sonora, Mexico owned by Alamos Gold.[1][2]
Location | |
---|---|
Location | Altar Municipality |
State | Sonora |
Country | Mexico |
Coordinates | 30°47′47″N 111°55′15″W |
Production | |
Products | Gold |
Type | Open-pit |
History | |
Discovered | Early 19th-century |
Owner | |
Company | Alamos Gold |
Local impacts | |
Pollution | Cyanide |
Impacted | Local soil contamination |
Artisanal mining started in the early 19th-century and continued until 2018, at which point operations reduced to leaching.
El Chanate is an open-pit gold mine located in the Altar Municipality of Sonora,[3] close to the Mexico–United States border,[4] in the northwest of Sonora, Mexico that is owned by Canadian corporation Alamos Gold.[4] The mine covers 4,618 hectares and is located around a fault, above sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Twenty-seven million tonnes of gold ore was estimated to be on site in 2014, grading 0.74g/t of gold.[2]
The mine was worked by artisan miners since the early 19th-century.[2] Denver-based Chanate Gold Mines Co. was registered in 1898.[5]
In the 2007, Capital Gold Corp's subsidiary Minera Santa Rita, started working the mine.[6]
In 2015, a merger between AuRico Gold and Alamos Gold, transferred the mine's ownership to the later company.[7]
In 2016, the mine's operators spilled 10,000 litres of cyanide solution, some was captured in ponds and some contained local soil, before being relocated into a lined leach pad.[4][8]
Mining stopped in late 2018, when operations switched to residual leaching.[9] As of 2023, the mine's owners had stopped listed it as a producing mine.[10]
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