[link to www.csmonitor.com]

Swiss villages, sitting on a gold mine, refuse to budge

Switzerland's Medel Valley contains gold ore worth an estimated $1.2 billion, but residents soundly rejected a proposal to mine the deposits, despite the community's need for jobs.

But at a time when Europe is in the grip of the worst recession since World War II, a cluster of villages in Switzerland has rebuffed the chance to reap the benefits of the gold deposits buried underfoot.

The villages voted in a referendum this month to block a Canadian mining company from mining an estimated $1.2 billion worth of gold ore believed to be underneath the pine forests and snow-capped peaks of the picturesque Medel Valley (see map here). It would have been the country’s first gold mine and one of only a handful in Europe.

Royalties from the mine would have guaranteed the five tiny villages and hamlets of the valley an income of around 40 million Swiss francs ($43.5 million) over the next 10 years – the kind of money that many towns and cities in Europe, forced to make savage cuts to public services to chip away at government debt, would have been glad to accept.