At a gold mining site in eastern Ghana, only the sounds of birds and insects break the lasting silence. Mining equipment stands still, as two Ghanaian companies wait for a new permit; a process that has taken months. The site sits near the Atewa Range Forest Reserve, an area protected by the government. Recently, a large amount of dirty waste water spilled over some of the forest’s vegetation. It came from a small gold mine that was operating without a government permit. Miners have a term for the waste water: slime. Felix Addo-Okyreh works for Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He says the slime is created when gold is separated from soil. Sometimes, the chemical mercury is used to aid the separation process. The resulting waste is then stored locally in dams. Addo-Okyreh says too much rain was to blame for the recent spillage. It rained heavily last week. So, the embankment of the dam was weak. And then it got broken, and this is the result.” The slime is toxic, meaning it can harm animals as well as plant life. It landed a few meters away from the Birim, a river supplying water to millions of people in Ghana’s capital, Accra.
