From: Anne Marie Tobias (atobias@interwoven.com)
Date: Wed Jun 06 2001 - 20:19:19 MDT
Hi James,
James Rogers wrote:
> Anne Marie Tobias wrote:
>
> >The mining industry has struggled (read paid off politicians by the
> >boat load) to make sure that no changes have been made mining
> >laws since the time of the Pony Express (which pretty much means
> >anything goes... if you're willing to stake a claim, you can do what
> >you please.)
>
> I have to ask you to cite sources. I have a lot of personal knowledge of
> the gold mining industry, both at the political/industrial level, and at
> the technical level as well. You are making claims that are easily
> verifiable as false. What do you know about the actual requirements and
> regulations regarding mining claims? It appears very little.
I have to be honest, most of my experience with mining issues involved
work I did in the late 80s, and the early 90s. At that time there was an
excellent arguement that US mining laws had change little in over a 100
years as exemplified by the Mining act of 1872. Now if there has been
some kind of revolution in mining that makes disasters like the radioactive
mine tailing on indian land, or the death by flood and mud slide from
improper coal mine tailing in the apalachians impossible... then I bow my
hat and stand down. If such a revolution has occurred, please point it out
to me... I'm perfectly ready to hear about it, heck, I'll be the first on to
pay for the champagne to celebrate :-)
Though just as an after thought, I think I recall Clinton being involved in a
dirty land deal that exploited just such archaic mining law... and if my
memory holds out that was 1998... hmmmm.
> >The results are that an investment firm comes in, they
> >build a huge shallow cyanide lake. They fill it with rediculously
> >poor gold ore. They then process the cyanide solution to extract
> >the gold. This is only economical if done on an immense scale.
> >The side effect is that they produce a superfund site that will cost
> >tax payers billions of dollars to clean up.
>
> Cyanide extraction on most ores is done in reactor vessels, because it is a
> reactive ion that will only stay useful in chemical environments that have
> an extremely high pH. If you simply dumped it in a lake, it wouldn't last
> very long at all, as it chemically reacts very easily and is susceptible to
> UV degradation in many forms. I am aware that sometimes cyanide solution
> is used to concentrate gold in the bottom of ore heaps; you douse a giant
> ore heap with cyanide solution, and while the cyanide doesn't last very
> long, it lasts long enough to migrate gold atoms toward the bottom of the
> heap. Lacking any real pH controls, you'll end up with very little cyanide
> running freely at the bottom. If anything dies from sitting in the pond,
> it would probably have as much to do with toxic metal exposure as it does
> with residual cyanide. And even if there was any cyanide in the pond, it
> would be quite cheap to bind it into a harmless form.
So James, as I said, most of the work I was doing was in the late 80s and
early 90s... I first read about tailing pond mining in Scientific American, and
pursued the issue further when several such miners defaulted on cleanup of
their mine, walking away with serveral ten of millions of dollars, but sticking
the public with a half billion dollar toxic waste site. Here is a quote from an
article I was easily able to pull off the web written by bat researchers;
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Although the boom days of prospectors and gold nuggets are long gone,
modern technology enables gold to continue to be extracted from ore.
Unfortunately, the extraction method has often been disastrous for bats
and other wildlife, an issue I first became aware of in early 1989. Phone
calls from Drs. Merlin Tuttle and Elizabeth Pierson, a BCI member and bat
researcher from Berkeley, California, alerted me that bats were dying from
apparent cyanide poisoning at gold mines in the western United States.
After extensive investigation, I concluded that the problem was major.
Based on data collected since 1980, and provided by 75 mines in Arizona,
California, and Nevada, wildlife deaths through 1989 totalled 7,609
vertebrates. Ninety-two percent were birds and 7% were mammals.
Among the reported 519 mammals between 1984 and 1989, 34% were
bats. The number of gold mines in these three states is estimated to be 160
and growing.
Today's gold is microgold. High-grade ore contains only 0.05 ounces per
ton but the gold is recoverable because it dissolves in a cyanide solution like
sugar dissolves in water. The solution (usually with 100-300 parts per million
cyanide) is channeled into ponds which are often left exposed. Mortality
likely occurs when wildlife come to drink, and it is also possible that
scavenging birds, mammals, and reptiles may ingest cyanide-poisoned wildlife.
To understand the problem, it is helpful to know a few basics of modern gold
mining. There are two principal methods of using cyanide solution to extract
gold from ore. In vat leaching, it is mixed with crushed rock in large enclosed
vats where gold adheres chemically to pieces of added carbon. When the
spent ore (tailings) and cyanide are sluiced to a mill-tailings pond, the
carbon is
retained. Gold is then removed from the carbon in a closed system, using
stronger cyanide solutions and heat. Ultimately, gold is electroplated from the
mixture.
The resulting mill-tailings ponds are often vast, sometimes 200 or more acres.
They may last the life-span of the mine (five to 15 years) and, in most
operations, are surveyed for dead wildlife only depending on degree of
concern or availability of mining personnel.
Heap leaching is the other method. Crushed ore is piled on plastic sheeting
on a large, flat-topped hill, or heap, where cyanide is sprinkled or dripped
from hoses on top. After the solution percolates through the heap, it is
collected and channeled by pipes to a pregnant pond (i.e., containing gold).
It then passes through carbon filters that separate the gold, which is
extracted
the same way as in vat leaching. The solution, now without gold, is piped to
a barren pond where it is recharged and returned to the top of the heap in a
continuous cycle.
Pregnant and barren ponds average about one acre, are easily surveyed for
dead wildlife, and are maintained for months or years. To prevent leakage,
the bottoms are fitted with a plastic liner, as are most mill-tailings ponds.
Additional pools are also formed on top of heaps. These long, narrow pools
lie in furrows of ore and are relatively small. Since they are transitory and
difficult to reach by vehicle, mining personnel usually do not check them for
dead wildlife.
Solutions to prevent mortality at these ponds have included various noise-
making devices and colored flagging, which not only is ineffective for
nocturnal animals, but also is ignored by other wildlife. Nothing has been as
successful as covering ponds with nets to prevent wildlife from visiting them.
The Cyprus Copperstone Mine, a vat-leach operation near Quartzsite,
Arizona, has two relatively small mill-tailings ponds, 18 and 23 acres.
Netting these ponds has completely ended mortality.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reports by the Audobon society, and other bird research organizations, talk
about several large ponds in the southwestern dessert accounting for massive
bird kills, and several large subsequest drops in migratory bird population
suggest that their reports were accurate.
It suprises me that an expert didn't know about this common mining technique?
> Quite frankly, the water in many gold mining areas is nasty and toxic by
> the nature of the geology of areas with gold concentrations; both from
> natural heavy element contamination and from very high natural acidity
> (such as in the U.S. gold mining areas). I wouldn't go swimming in *any*
> pond in these areas that hadn't been tested for serious natural metal
> contamination. I know that in the U.S. gold mining areas, some of the
> natural ponds have arsenic levels that are several orders of magnitude
> higher than anything people are allowed to produce, and sulfuric acid is
> mined from natural springs. The earth is not benevolent. Many things
> attributed to mining (in the U.S. at least) existed long before the
> mines. I'm not saying that mines don't sometimes create a mess or that
> they shouldn't clean up their mess, but the mess created by mining is
> highly over-stated in many cases. Or at least the cases that I am familiar
> with (the Great Basin mining region).
Actually I've been in several mines in Colorada, both gold and lead. Of
course Cripple Creek is now more of tourist trap than anything else, but
there are still plenty of active mines in the area. Recent geological survey
suggests that the contaminated water escaping from abandoned mines in
the Rockies, is a primary sourse of heavy metal pollution in the mountain
states... Of course, as you say, the mountains have always been a major
source of water contamination... but not to the degree we see today, and
we have plenty of silt evidence on the colorado river to bear that out.
> >That's a cynical,
> >self serving business... it damages the world and it screws the
> >public, and makes a very few people moderately wealthy.
>
> Actually, gold mining is a relatively meager income for most people, and
> the single most common occupation in many gold producing regions. Very few
> people get wealthy mining gold these days. In these regions, the public is
> served very well by mining. The only people who complain about it are
> bored city-dwellers who continue to consume the metals mined in vast
> quantities and have never visited the regions in question.
>
> -James Rogers
> jamesr@best.com
I'm not arguing with you... for the single prospector it's hand to mouth. For
the leach miner... it's a quick way to make a few million... at the cost of
many millions to the general public, and the environment. It just points to
a kind of behavior... a kind of people who don't care who they hurt or the
havoc that wreak... they are only interested in their personal gain, and the
rest be damned. I find that difficult to condone, in a world that squeezes
us closer together every day, I find this a serious problem.
Marie
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