El Salvador's San Sebastian river has no fish. The runoff from a gold mine upstream, already shuttered two decades ago, has long killed them all.

Now, residents fear the same fate for other rivers -- and the creatures and people depending on them -- after Congress, at President Nayib Bukele's request, reversed a ban on metal mining.

Bukele billed the move as a way of invigorating the Central American country's stagnant economy, but environmentalists and river-side communities fear the potential harms far outweigh any benefits.

In the community of Santa Rosa de Lima, a two-hour drive from the capital San Salvador, wastewater still flows directly into the San Sebastian river from a nearby hill where a gold mine operated for 100 years until 2006.

The site is still being illegally exploited by artisanal gold miners.

On a recent expedition to survey the river with a........

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