North Mara Gold Mine is an open pit and underground gold mine in the Tarim District of the Mara Region of Tanzania. It is one of three gold mines of Acacia Mining plc, a London-listed company, operating in Tanzania, the other two being Bulyanhulu and Buzwagi Gold Mine.
Modern day gold mining in Tanzania dates back to the German colonial era, where the discovery of gold began near Lake Victoria in 1894. Work on Tanganyika’s first gold mine, the Sekenki Mine, began in 1909, and saw gold mining in Tanzania. boom between 1930 and World War II. By 1967, the country’s gold production fell to a negligible level, but it was revived in the mid-1970s, when the price of gold rose again. In the late 1990s, foreign mining companies began investing in the exploration and development of gold deposits in Tanzania, which led to the opening of a number of new mines.
The North Mara mine, which opened in 2002, consists of an active open pit (Niapyrama) and one active underground mine (Jokona), a processing plant, waste rock dumps, a waste containment pond, and other associated facilities. As of 2014, the mine had a life expectancy of 9 years remaining.
In 2009, Tanzanian Member of Parliament, Harrison Mwakimbe, demanded the closure of the Mara gold mine, because eighteen villagers from Nyamungu were killed due to contamination of the mine’s drinking water. In February 2010, the National Assembly of Tanzania ordered the government to complete a study to determine whether the North Mara gold mine was polluting the Tegeth River (the source of drinking water for more than 250,000 people), thus killing people and livestock, as it happened. mentioned. The government accepted the “principle” of conducting the study, stating that there was minimal environmental monitoring in the area because the National Environmental Management Board is very small, with only 20 environmental inspectors for the entire country.
In June 2010, the Tanzanian government declared the Tegeth River to be pollution-free, following changes made to the Barik Environmental Programme. The government stated that the water was safe to drink and suitable for human consumption. Barrick replaced 40,000 square meters (430,000 square feet) of lining inside the sewage pool, which they claim was destroyed by vandalism.