The mining history of Leadville, Colorado, is well documented and the details are left to the reader to pry out of the internet. As a process chemist, my interest in mining is more directed to the geochemistry and milling of the ore. How did they get the pay out of the paydirt?
How does it come about that we can get our hands on particular elements like molybdenum, gold, silver, uranium, tungsten, vanadium, etc? How do the elements manage to concentrate into ore bodies that are worth the effort and expense to refine?
When you take the various mine tours around the country, the spiel offered by the guide is usually geared toward the lowest common denominator- our fascination with fabulous wealth. The miners were certainly taken with the possibility of wealth. Gold and silver mines are an easy sell because everybody has greed and everybody yearns to pluck a fat nugget of gold from a pan of gravel. Other types of mines are a tougher sell entertainment-wise and require a bit more explanation of the relevance of the obscure element that is being extracted.
Mining is an activity with good and bad effects. To sustain modern civilization, if you can’t grow what you need, you have to mine it. Mining is inherently extractive in nature and requires that large volumes of earth be disturbed. Open pit mining requires that overburden be removed and the mineral value be moved to a processing site. Material sidestreams are generated and must be dealt with.
Underground mines also generate large volumes of material that must be piled somewhere. To ensure responsibility for reclamation costs mining companies are required to put up a surety bond to cover the costs of future reclamation under 43 CFR section 3809.
The inevitable trade-off that a society must make is one of environmental insult for material goods. The balance point is always hard to find, and in fact is usually a moving target on account of politics, employment, and environmentalism.
Mining can have substantial effects on the landscape, the watershed, real estate, and the future tax base. Land that is not available for habitation or sustainable commercial use is fundamentally limited in potential value. An area covered with mine tailings, mine shafts, the occasional blasting cap, and acidic runoff is an area that requires cash infusion on a long timescale.
But if we enjoy the benefits of lead batteries in our cars, or silver jewelry, tungsten elements in our light bulbs, zinc plated wire fences, or the ten thousand other metal products in our lives, we must come to grips with the consequences for having such material goods. At some stretch point, everybody becomes a Luddite. Question: How much technological triumphalism can we take? Answer: Whatever the market says we can take.
Our society has benefitted greatly from metallurgy. The compulsion to recover metals from the ground is one of the great economic forces in civilization. No amount of highminded pontification will stop it. Metals enable industry and war which are forever entangled in politics and greed. The goal is to be smart about how we mine elements from the ground so that maximum value of the surrounding land may be enjoyed. The enthusiasms of the time come and go. But metals are forever.
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August 10, 2009 at 12:37 pm
dalemoser
benefits of lead batteries in our cars
Even worse — Research What it takes to make a battery for the Toyoya
Pries. I have been told the entire process is an environmental disaster.
This is the wave of the future — Battery Driven Cars from ????
Good Job on Leadville
August 10, 2009 at 8:13 pm
John Spevacek
I suppose a discussion of mineral rights would be out of the general realm of interest, as there are no lawyers here. An interesting topic nonetheless, as people are often unaware that when they buy property, they are only buying what they see. (I know better than to ask about water rights, as what you face out West is far different than what we face her in the land of 10,000 lakes.)
August 11, 2009 at 5:19 am
gaussling
North of here, in Ft Collins, many have had a rude introduction to mineral rights. West of Ft Collins, a diamond deposit has been found that its owners want to exploit. It’s an actual kimberlite pipe. East of Ft Collins a uranium deposit has been found. Neighbors of both have appealed to local government for help in stopping any mining activity that may result. But people didn’t realize that mineral rights are a fundamental thing and you can’t just interefere with it because it offends your aesthetic sensibilities. People with mineral rights are entitled to use and enjoy what they own.
August 11, 2009 at 11:48 am
Uncle Al
It looks like the Earth deeply cracked from the Canadian diamondiferous Slave craton through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas… to Crater of Diamonds State Park, Arkansas. Kimberlites and lamprophyres are everywhere along the arc.
Deep drill the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, slip in a fully uranium jacketed Tsar Bomba, pop the Moho with a 150 MT blast, and catch watermelon-sized diamonds as they fly out.
September 8, 2009 at 6:46 am
gaussling
I’ll have to look for information on this arc you refer to.
February 27, 2010 at 11:58 am
Ula
Hello!
I am the Photo Editor of World Pulse Magazine and am writing to inquire about the use of the mine tailings photo.
Can you let me know who the photographer is and how I might contact him/her?
Kind regards,
Ula
—
Ula Kuras
Photo Editor
World Pulse
t. 1.503.331.3900 | f. 1.503.914.1418 | http://www.worldpulse.com
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February 27, 2010 at 1:40 pm
gaussling
Hi Ula,
I sent you an email.
Cheers
April 4, 2012 at 9:23 am
Ralph Reagan
If the acid rain from California ceased, we wouldn’t have these problems The EPA is the enemy of jobs.
My first job in Telluride was killed on this subject. I was born in Leadville.
April 4, 2012 at 10:23 am
gaussling
Hi Ralph,
I’m not sure what you’re referring to about the EPA. The acidic mine leachate from the tailings piles above Leadville have to be managed. It can take centuries for the hazardous components to become passivated by weathering and oxidation. Metal sulfides are a substantial fraction of the tailings. These sulfides air oxidize to sulfuric acid which drops the pH of runoff and leaches metals in doing so. These metals in solution get into the watershed and into streams and soild, contaminating large areas. Lead, silver, arsenic, antimony, copper, and other elements are poisonous at quite low levels.
I would offer that wreckless mining is self-defeating in the long run. The tailings piles and heavy metal contamination you see in the many mining regions in the west is the result of 19th century free market self “regulation”. This is one of the reasons we have an EPA.