Certeju de Sus is an old mining centre in Hunedoara county, located in the south-eastern area of Metaliferi Mountains. The place lies within the Golden Quadrilateral of Apuseni Mountains. The gold mining project of Certej is owned 80% by the Canadian company Eldorado Gold and less than 20% by the Romanian state. For its features – the devastating impact on the environment, the legal flaws, the network of shareholders, i.e. the holding companies, the project operating in Certej is similar to the one proposed in Roşia Montană, attracting over time serious criticism by the environmental protection organizations in Romania. Since 2008, the local community started to show opposition to the project. The mining company intended to build two tailings dams, one of which for cyanide oxidation, on Frumoasei Valley within the Balşa commune. 102 local people and land owners in Voia, signed a memorandum against cyanide mining. The company had to change the location of their tailings management facilities (TMF). In December 2011 Eldorado Gold initiated the takeover of European Goldfields for the amount of 2.5 billion dollars. The acquisition was completed in February 2012. Eldorado Gold became thus the majority shareholder of the Deva Gold joint stock company. Eldorado Gold Corporation is a Canadian low-cost murky mining company listed on the Vancouver stock exchange, which holds mining perimeters in Greece, Romania, Turkey, China and Brazil. On 5 July 2012 the Regional Environmental Protection Agency in Timişoara (EPA) issued the environmental permit no. 8 for the mining of gold-silver ores in the Certej perimeter. Although the Regional EPA in Timişoara is subordinated to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMSC), the minister of environment, Rovana Plumb, maintained that she only learned about the issuance of this environmental agreement at the beginning of September. In issuing the environmental permit for the Certej project, the authorities found as acceptable the impacts of 29 million cubic meters of water consumption from the Mureş River, the deforestation of 187 hectares of forest and overlapping of the mining project with the Natura 2000 – 0132 ROSPA Ore Mountains site over an area of 108 hectares. Due to public contestations and outrage among the Romanian public, the Environmental Protection Agency in Hunedoara requested additional biodiversity impacts report that however resulted in a new environmental permit issued in November 2013. Considering that the new document illegally replaced and revised the environmental permit issued by the Regional Environmental Protection Agency Timişoara in 2012, Mining Watch Romania decided to dispute the new act in administrative due process. The recent update in the environmental approval process mainly referred to the fact that the mining site is partially included in a nature site, Natura 2000 ROSPA 0132 Munții Metaliferi. Around 108 hectares of the mining site are part of the 26,600 hectares natural site, which, according to Mining Watch, was already known and included in the original paperworks to get the approval. What was lacking, however, was a study from the site owners on the impact of the mine on the larger natural site, something that should have been required to get the approval.

According to European Goldfields reports, the total investment value by the end of 2009 was about 43,000,000 US dollars.

UPDATE:

After an oper letter to the Minister for Environment in November 2015 calling for an over-all assessment of the five sites as one and the court's admittance of a request by Mining Watch Romania to suspend the validity of the construction permit for Certej, Deva Gold was forced to stop their construction work. The court’s decision has immediate effect and an appeal would not override the decision until its final resolution. This means that the construction permit issued to Deva Gold to prepare the facilities in order to later build the tailings dams has lost its legal validity.

UPDATE:

Eldorado Gold through its subsidiaries Deva Gold SA and European Goldfields SRL has obtained four more sites in the vincinity of Certej.

Eldorado Gold now holds a total of 4,591 hectares only in the southern area of Metaliferi Mountains. The total surface equals that of a city like Târgu Mureş, Arad, Bacău or Deva and comprises Certej, Sălişte Hondol, Băiţa Crăciuneşti, Certej Nord and Troiţa Piţigus. Although Eldorado Gold presents these concessions as distinct projects, a map prepared by Mining Watch Romania shows that they are actually a single unitary project. The different sites partially overlap and will be sharing the same technological infrastructure, namely the processing plant, trailings dam and roads network.

By presenting the sites as individual projects, Eldorado Gold circumvents the need to have their environmental assessments reevaluated. As a single entity the site would also face a high risk of being deemed too big and too potentially harmfull to be approved.

UPDATE:

In October 2014 Deva Gold started construction work in Certej. The mayor announced that the neccessary permits had been granted but refused to present them to members of Mining Watch. After the opening of a courtcase to make those documents public and a petition to the then president-elect Iohannis the building permit was revoked and the works had to be stopped. In October 2015, however, a new construction permit was issued that allowed Deva Gold to resume construction works in Certej.

The gold-bearing deposit in the Certej perimeter has an estimated quantity of 45.5 mil. tonnes with a concentration of 1.8 g/t Au and 10 g/t Ag and is proposed to be mined on a 456.2 ha area. The Certej mining project, with a 16 year duration and a processing capacity of 3 mil. tonnes of ore/year, involves deforestation, soil uncovering, an open pit, two huge waste dumps and the use of cyanides to obtain gold, as well as building two tailings dams over 63.6 ha.

The project area is 456.2 ha, currently covered by: forests 187 ha, meadows 30.7 ha, arable fields 5.3 ha, residential areas 18.7 ha. Out of this area 62.8 ha will be turned into Certej open pit and 63.6 ha into tailings dams for cyanide tailings, in addition to the processing plant and other specific premises.

The ore is obtained by uncovering the soil and using explosives - ANFO (a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil). This would result in a crater with maximum depth 290 m, dug in 30 m steps. The ore is delivered from the open pit to the processing plant by 65 t trucks for 24 h/day, 7 days/week, 360 days/year.

The scale of the Certej mining project requires the use of 26,448 tonnes of sodium cyanide and 15,280 tonnes of copper sulphate during the 16 years of operation.