El Chanate
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]
  El Chanate  El Chanate | |
| 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.
Description
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]
History
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]