 Authorities in Colombia have blown up an illegal mining site and destroyed mining equipment in the country's Amazon, as part of joint efforts with Brazil to crack down on gold mines in the area. Colombia and Brazil destroyed 19 illegal gold mining treaches in the Amazon rainforest, which were producing about $1.5 million of the precious metal a month and polluting rivers with mercury. Colombia's armed forces said on December 6. Monthly production at the illegal mining operation was 23 kilograms, Colombian authorities said the US-backed bilateral operation targeted the infrastructure of the transnational criminal group familia del Norte, whose illicit gold mining dumped 114,000 grams of mercury and polluted 68 million liters of water every month, according to authorities.