Category: Mining

$90 million settlement reached to pay for mine cleanup near Silverton

1/23/2022

A $90 million settlement between the federal government, Colorado and the owners of the Sunnyside Mine will pay for additional cleanup at the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site after years of litigation. The Environmental Protection Agency, Justice Department, Department of the Interior, Department Agriculture and state of Colorado announced Friday they have reached a settlement with Sunnyside Gold Corp. and its parent company Kinross Gold Corp. to fund remediation in the Bonita Peak Mining District near Silverton. In the case of an old-fashioned standoff, the federal government will drop its claims against Sunnyside Gold Corp. and Canadian mining company Kinross Gold Corp. and the two companies will drop their claims against the federal government after the settlement. - Cortez Journal

What a Gold Mining Mishap Taught Us About Rivers

1/13/2022

In 1900, gold miners working for an English investment corporation set off dynamite to blow a 5-meter gap in a 30-meter ridge. The site, now called The Kink in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, sits on the traditional land of the Hän and Dënéndeh people. Within hours of the explosion, the river abandoned the old channel and rushed down the new one, tearing at the bedrock and more than doubling the size of the gap. Over the next century, the new channel would morph from a waterfall into a series of rapids and would reveal how bedrock canyon incision works. - EOS

Magnesium Buyers Warn Crunch Threatens Millions of European Jobs

10/29/2021

Europe’s magnesium shortage could shutter industrial operations within weeks, threatening thousands of businesses and millions of jobs in sectors from cars to packaging, associations warned. Chinese exports of magnesium -- a critical material for hardening aluminum alloys and used in everything from power tools to laptops - has plunged as the nation cuts output because of an energy crunch. That’s caused prices to spike and left buyers worldwide exposed. - Bloomberg

Land in White Tank Mts Closed to Clear Lead from Years of Recreational Shooting

7/24/2021

Years of recreational shooting left hazardous levels of lead in the soil of a parcel of land in the White Tank Mountains, and the site west of Phoenix will remain closed for three more years for cleanup. The area was shuttered to recreational shooting after a pregnant woman was killed by a stray bullet more than three years ago. The multimillion-dollar remediation effort comes as Buckeye aims to lease the land from the federal Bureau of Land Management for a park. It's an area that public safety officials previously describe as "a mess" because of the number of people shooting at all hours, in all directions. - AZ Central

‘They Failed Us’ - How Mining and Logging Devastated a Pacific Island in a Decade

5/31/2021

There is perhaps nowhere in the Pacific where the costs of extractive industries are as heartbreakingly clear as Rennell Island. The island, a tiny dot in the vast South Pacific that lies at the southern tip of Solomon Islands, is home to a few thousand people. And it’s starkly divided. On one side is pristine East Rennell, a Unesco world heritage site, which offers a glimpse of Rennell unspoiled. But in the last decade, West Rennell has suffered the triple assault of logging, bauxite mining, and a devastating oil spill from when a bulk carrier, hired by a mining company, ran aground on a reef. - Guardian

Only 3% of Earth’s Land Hasn’t Been Marred by Humans

4/28/2021

The vast majority of land on Earth — a staggering 97 percent — no longer qualifies as ecologically intact, according to a sweeping survey of Earth’s ecosystems. Over the last 500 years, too many species have been lost, or their numbers reduced, researchers report April 15 in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Of the few fully intact ecosystems, only about 11 percent fall within existing protected areas, the researchers found. Much of this pristine habitat exists in northern latitudes, in Canada’s boreal forests or Greenland’s tundra, which aren’t bursting with biodiversity. But chunks of the species-rich rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia also remain intact. - Science News

California Orders Nestlé to Stop Siphoning Spring Water

4/28/2021

California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state. The draft cease-and-desist order, which still requires approval from the California Water Resources Control Board, is the latest development in a protracted battle between the bottled water company and local environmentalists, who for years have accused Nestlé of draining water supplies at the expense of local communities and ecosystems. - HCN

Mountaintop Removal Threatens Traditional Blackfoot Territory

2/7/2021

The Rocky Mountains that lie within Blackfoot traditional territory are threatened with mountaintop removal. The Grassy Mountain coal project in Alberta, Canada, is slated to begin coal extraction in fall 2021. It is expected to be profitable for only 25 years. However, by then the almost 4,000-acre project will have blasted the terrain with explosives, separating the substrata from the coal and creating a new rock-scape the size of almost 3,000 American football fields. Places where mountaintop coal removal occurs are never the same; just look at West Virginia, where mountain areas once rich with biodiverse forests have been reduced to barren desolation. And, as my grandmother taught me, disturbed areas are not places to practice Blackfoot traditional knowledge. - - High Country News Perspective

Mountaintop removal mining in British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains.
BC Mining Information

Coal’s Big Breakdown

2/3/2021

For a half-century, coal plants in the US west churned, pumping electricity onto the grid, cash into state and tribal coffers, and pollution into the water, land and air, unruffled by recessions or environmental protests and lawsuits, impervious to the booms and busts that plagued oil, gas and hardrock mining. Just as the coal leviathan maintained a steady stream of “baseload” power to the grid, so too did it provide an economic foundation for coal-dependent communities, together with a baseload level of smog. Now that foundation is crumbling. - High Country News

Playing the ‘Green Lottery’: Life Inside Colombia’s Emerald Mines

1/5/2021

It’s no secret that the miners in this region work in difficult and often dangerous conditions — some in sanctioned and regulated areas, some illicitly. They labor under the threat of collapsing mines, falling rocks and temperatures in excess of 110 degrees. Despite the risks, many of the miners speak to me about their work with pride, as if buoyed by a sense of tradition. - NYTimes

Pebble Mine Permit Denied by Trump Administration

11/27/2020

The Trump administration on Wednesday denied a permit for a controversial gold and copper mine near the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery in southwest Alaska. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said application to build the Pebble Mine was denied under both the Clean Water Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act. The corps said the discharge plan from the Pebble Limited Partnership did not comply with Clean Water Act guidelines. The agency “concluded that the proposed project is contrary to the public interest...” - High Country News

The Pebble Mine was proposed at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay where sockeye salmon migration can exceed 46 million fish annually.

Once a Boom Town, Now a Ghost Town. Always a Hometown.

10/2/2020

Now a ghost town, Harshaw was one of nine mining camps in the area that saw waves of prospectors come and go in the 19th century. It held some of the Arizona Territory’s highest-grade silver, lead and gold ore, so when the U.S. government passed the General Mining Act in 1872, giving prospectors the right to claim mineral deposits on public land for no more than $5 per acre, investors poured in. A patchwork of mining claims soon covered the region, with 40 operations in Harshaw alone. Within three decades, the Patagonia Mountains had produced 79% of all the ore processed in the territory, with a total value exceeding $2.5 trillion yearly in today’s currency. - HCN