Introduction
In our days, mining for resources is inevitable. The resources we need are valuable in everyday life. Such resources mined up are coal, copper, gold, silver, and sand. However, mining poses environmental risks that can degrade the quality of soil and water, which can end up effecting us humans if not taken care of and many of the damages are irreversible once they have occurred.
History and Case Studies of Mining and the Effects on the Environment
Mines pose a threat to the environment. They can degrade soil and water quality if left untreated. The United States Environmental protection Agency (USEPA)'s Region 9 assessment of state data states that there are approximately 420,000 abandoned mines in the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada with 13,242 of them being considered "abandoned mines with potential environmental hazard" (arizona.edu, 2008).
Left behind are tailings, which are large piles of crushed rock left over when minerals have been extracted from rocks that once contained them. These tailings are then left prone to wind dispersion and water erosion. This wind dispersion occurs since the sand-like tailings are easily swept up by the atmosphere by wind and spread throughout the environment as dust particles. Figure 1 shows the wind erosion of a mine tailings pile being blow up into the air, creating dust. These tailings contain metal contaminants like arsenic, lead, and cadmium, which creates a problem for the environment and they can persist for decades due to the low pH levels and can cause problems in soil stabilization (arizona.edu, 2008).
As a result of this process, the mine sites "do not develop normal soil structure or support the establishment of a plant cover". Many mine sites have...
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...sues with environmental concerns with mining and smelting, the economic issue is one of them that tops the list. Something needs to be done to drive the cost of environmental control equipment down. Should this be how the equipment is manufactured differently, made more efficiently, or created with lower cost material.
Works Cited
Coil, D., McKittrick, E., and Higman, B. (2010, December 16). Acid Mine Drainage. Ground Truth Trekking. Retrieved February 12, 2011, from http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/MetalsMining/AcidMineDrainage.html
Mine Tailings. (2008). The University of Arizona Superfund Research Program (SBRP). Retrieved February 12, 2011, from http://superfund.pharmacy.arizona.edu/Mine_Tailings.php
Warhurst, A. (1999). Mining and the environment: case studies from the Americas. Ottawa, ON, Canada: International Development Research Centre.
The Making of a Hardrock Miner written by Stephen M. Voynick, describes his own personal experiences as a hardrock miner in four different underground mines in the western United States, the Climax molybdenum mine in Colorado, Hecla Lakeshore Project a copper mine in Arizona, and two uranium mines in Wyoming. Rather than a book telling of the fortunes gained and lost, this book was about the relationships gained, but then also lost through mining. Stephen M. Voynick’s direct words and simple writing style provided a book that was an easy read and educational about mine work and safety.
Throughout this mining process a byproduct is created called chat. The chat is leftover rock and waste from mining that did not contained the desired materials. The chat was left on the site because the Bureau of Indian Affairs thought it could be of value to the Quapaw tribe (1). This chat contained high levels of toxic lead and other harmful chemicals. It is estimated that there are 75 Million tons (150 billion pounds) of chat piles remaining exposed to the environment as well as numerous flotation ponds that haven’t been taken into account (4).
Removal of the mountaintops causes environmental impacts from blasting. The blasting has caused rocks to be deposited into valleys on the hillsides, burying almost 2,000 miles of streams which feed the Mississippi River. Slurry, the residue which is used to clean the coal can wash into groundwater and may contain arsenic, lead, manganese, iron, sodium, strontium, and sulfate. A recent research study is beginning to link these environmental impacts to the grave health concerns in the Appalachian communities. During most of the Mountaintop removal mining’s history coal industries have been able to obtain permits easily to operate, but once under the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) those permits now take more time to obtain. The permit process requires all applications to be reviewed before being given out to coal
Mountain Top Removal is an American tragedy, the process in which mining companies remove forests and topsoil then explode the mountain apart level by level to get to coal layer. It is estimated that the explosives are equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb. A lot of the mining waste is discarded into valleys and streams; the water runoff is high in silt, ion, and sulfur compounds, which in turn pollute water downstream. Even with chemical treatments, vegetation has a hard time growing on the infertile and highly acidic soil. Mountain top removal occurs in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee. Virtually 1.2 million acres of land has been surface mined and more than 500 mountains have been ruined by mountaintop removal mining.
In order to find the benefits and hazards of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, I used the various resources and gathered information from both sides of the questions posed, including economical benefits such as earnings, and environmental hazards such as ongoing experiments to clean up acid mine drainage. And some opinions written and expressed in newspaper articles and magazines.
Strip mining( the cheapest method of mining) is one of the most controversial because it jeopardizes the environment that causes the strip-mined land to either be very expensive or impossible to reclaim.
Mountaintop removal mining has been around for several decades—it started to become prevalent in Appalachia in 1985. 1,2 The general overview of the process of mountaintop removal mining goes as follows: Miners select a mountain to extract coal “seams” from, and clear its surface of major obstructions, mainly trees. 3 Next, either by explosives or machinery, the surface rock and soil of the mountain is removed. As the coal begins to become visible throughout the mountain, miners scoop out the coal. Throughout the process, many tons of rock and dust are displaced into neighboring areas, most often called “valley fills”. As the title implies, valley fills are what once used to be a peaceful vegetated valley that has now been filled with rubble. The coal itself goes through a cleaning process to remove some materials which make for a cleaner burn cycle. After all of the coal is extracted, the mountain goes through a reclamation process which is intended to stabilize and re-vegetate the now-crippled peak. 3 Unfortunately, coal companies tend to s...
The industrial activities of both require the removal of forest vegetation in order to explore or gain access to extraction sites. The proximity of cut blocks, well-sites, or mines to hydrologic systems will determine the magnitude of the impact. After a significant disturbance event, such as large scale removal of vegetation from a landscape, the ability of the landscape to resist erosion is severely reduced. As a result, large amounts of sediments and nutrients that were previously held and utilized by the natural vegetation communities present enter the local hydrological system. After a disturbance event, typically large flushes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are observed entering local hydrologic systems (Richardson, 2008 and Webster et al., 2014).
As previously mentioned, the modern techniques used for mining are extremely different than those of prehistoric times. In the early history of mining, ancient peoples dug for materials close to the earth surface with make shift shovels and pics; as one could imagine, this...
Mining not only has an impact on the environment, but also on the inhabitants. Mining in the Canadian Shield mining is one of the main sources of human and economic activities, but in the process, can cause great harm as well . Some of the effects of open pit mining are topographic modifications, soil changes, surface water quality changes, groundwater quality changes, air quality changes, chemical residues, land Subsidence, cultural factors, including: aesthetic, noise, and visual effects, flora and fauna alterations, land use modifications and economic costs. The problems associated with in situ mining are many. The leaching liquid used for in-situ leaching may contain the leaching agent ammonium carbonate or sulfuric acid. The advantages of this technology are the reduced hazards for the employees from accidents, dust, and radiation, the low cost and no need for large uranium mill tailings deposits. The disadvantages of the in situ leaching technology are the risk of spreading of leaching liquid outside of the uranium deposit, involving subsequent groundwater contamination, the unpredictable impact of the leaching liquid on the rock of the deposit and the impossibility of restoring natural groundwater conditions after completion of the leaching operations. Moreover, in-situ leaching releases considerable amounts of radon, and produces certain amounts of waste slurries and waste water during recovery of the uranium
Reason one is it is bad and harmful for the lakes, and it causes pollution. It harms the environment by the extra sulfide being transported. There could be a problem that occurs with how the sulfide is being contained, and it could seep out into the Boundary Waters that are near the mining ground. The mining could also affect the air quality around, and that can be harmful for people and animals to breathe in.
In her book Coal A Human History, Barbara Freese states "The mundane mineral that built our global economyand even today powers our electrical plantshas also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction" (front flap) Today, coal provides for more than 55% of the electricity generated in the U.S. (Cullen, Robert Vol.272) Coal miners have had one of the most dangerous jobs in history before government regulation. Many miners had to work underground for 10 + hours a day and 6 days a week(Cobb, James "Coal") The number of deaths per year is the equivalent of a Titanic going down in the nation's coal fields each year (Turkington, Carol) According to James Cobb from the World Book Online Reference Center mine safety involves four main types of problems including accidents involving machinery, roof and rib failures, accumulations of gases and concentrations of coal dust.
Though it has had many negative impacts on the environment in the past, mining is a vital industry completely necessary to our economy and lives. Nearly every item we use or encounter in our day to day lives is mined or contains mined products. Without the excavation of such materials things like computers, televisions, large building structures, electricity, and cars would not be possible. Virtually every technological and medical advance uses minded materials, without which millions would suffer. Some examples of minerals in the home include the telephone which is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, silver, and talc. A television requires over 35 different minerals, and more than 30 minerals are needed to make a single personal computer. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year, which is higher than all other countries with the exception of Japan, which is a staggering figure representative of our dependence and need for mined minerals. Coal makes up more than half of nation’s electricity, and will continue to be the largest electrical supplier into 2020 & accounting for some 95 percent of the nation's fossil energy reserves – nine of every ten short-tons of coal mined in the United States is used for electricity generation. As the population of the world grows more mineral resources must be exploited through mining in order to support the rising demand for such products. Though it may present a hazard to the environment and those physically located nears the mines, the materials extracted from mines...
Burning and mining coal for fuel is harmful to the environment, but because of how cheap and easy it is to find, many people are unwilling to give it up as a fuel source. One of the problems with coal is that they are limited and are non-renewable, so once it has been used we won’t be able to use it again. When coal gets burned, they start to release harmful, dangerous toxins such as mercury, lead and arsenic that will then escape into the air. It also releases large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. These emissions increase the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere and lead to global warming.
Mining is the process or industry of obtaining minerals from the earth. Topics in this paper I’ll be specifically discussing are pros and cons of mining, structures of a mine, mining in general, California gold rush, diamonds in Africa, and comparison of diamond and gold mines.