Decades of intense and unregulated mining activities have resulted in more and deeper scars in the hills of this farming area.
In the past, local villagers were able to use the streams coming from the mountains for drinking water and for irrigation, but now there is no clean water available and what flows from the hills when it rains is the milky white wastewater that makes its way into the farmland and river. According to the sampling test results, there are four kinds of heavy metals present in the soil and three kinds in the rice cultivated in the area, that are exceeding the safety levels.