SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador's Congress approved Monday a law that would lift the country’s seven-year-old ban on mining for metals.

The law, proposed by President Nayib Bukele and passed on a 57 to 3 vote, would allow mining everywhere except nature reserves and sensitive watersheds. It's expected to go into law with his approval.

The law bans the use of toxic mercury in gold mining, and would require private companies to enter a type of joint venture with the government to open mines.

Environmentalists and the Roman Catholic church oppose the resumption of mining, citing potential damage to ecosystems, but Bukele called the ban “absurd” earlier this year.

Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas recently asked the president not to reverse the ban, which has been in place since 2017.

“It will damage this country forever,” Msgr. Escobar Alas said in a homily.

That view was also voiced by about 100 civic and environmental activists who protested near Congress.

“They are giving us a gift, on Dec. 23, 2024, of pollution for our water, our land,” said Adalberto Blanco, of the Permanent Roundtable on Risk Management.

A poll released by Central American University José Simeón Cañas suggested that a majority of Salvadorans feel mining is not appropriate for their country.

In November, the highly popular Bukele proposed mining gold. The county's unmined gold could be “wealth that could transform El Salvador,” he wrote on the social platform X. He has estimated the country's gold reserves are worth $3 trillion.

At this point, exploration has revealed deposits of gold and silver, but has been was no large-scale metal mining. It’s unclear what how large the country's gold reserves could be.

Bukele’s party controls El Salvador’s Congress by a wide margin and his political opposition has been devastated.