President Dan excludes mining at Rosia Montana using today's technology

  On a tour at Rosia Montana on Monday, President Nicusor Dan said that, under the current technology, he excludes mining the local gold reserves in the Apuseni Mountains.Asked by a journalist if he still sees Rosia Montana mining or more as a tourist destination, Dan replied that "without mining using today's technology.""It is a matter of technology. If we are talking about gold and today's technology, mining is excluded, to be very clear. I mean, for the level of resources we have here and the technology we have today, you can only mine by destroying everything, and you can't do that. The identity potential, beyond the economic one, is much greater by keeping everything than by scraping everything," he said.He added that "if in 50 years' time there is some adequate technology all the better."   Romania's President Nicusor Dan visited Rosia Montana on Monday, accompanied by his family, occasion on which the presidential family toured the Roman Galleries and met with volunteers of the "Adopt a House in Rosia Montana" campaign.Photographs with the head of state among the volunteers were posted on Monday on the Facebook page of the "Adopt a House in Rosia Montana" programme."Surprise visit today during lunch break: an old friend and supporter of Rosia Montana and its heritage, President Nicusor Dan, together with his family, returned to Rosia Montana!," reads the posted message.Nicusor Dan and his family also toured the Roman Galleries belonging to the Rosia Montana Gold Mining Museum, established in 1981.The "Adopt a House in Rosia Montana" programme started in 2012 by initiating intervention activities to the buildings owned by the local community. Since it started, hundreds of volunteers arriving at the Rosia Montana from around the world have taken part in the project.The programme was initiated by Alburnus Maior, the local association dedicated to protecting the rights of the Rosia Montana community members, in partnership with ARA - Architecture. Restoration. Archaeology, an association active in research, conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage to the benefit of communities and society.The Rosia Montana mining cultural landscape was inscribed on July 27, 2021 in the UNESCO World Heritage List, thus recognising its exceptional universal value, substantiated by four of the six cultural criteria established by the World Heritage Convention: the most important, extensive and technically diverse underground mining complex of Roman antiquity, together with ore exploitation areas, residential  areas, sacred areas, necropolises.In the underground of Rosia Montana there are over 150 kilometres of galleries, in the depths of the four mountain massifs. There, the largest gold mining system of the Roman era known so far was documented, and also an extensive mining system of the modern era (17th-18th centuries) using gunpowder and dynamite in the 19th -20th centuries.Specialists claim that the Rosia Montana mines had been in use 150 years before the occupation of Dacia by the Romans.Studies show that the proven reserves of the Rosia Montana deposit amount to 323 tonnes of gold and over 1,600 tonnes of silver.