What are the Environmental Impacts of Mining?
it said that if it isn't grown its mind
and our demand for minerals and precious
metals that have built our world
continues to grow as our population and
cities expand Nevada continues to be one
of the richest sources on the planet of
a variety of minerals.
Recommended for your research:
what we have here
is diatomaceous earth diatomaceous earth
here in Nevada is really what makes us
unique to the mining here in this state
our products are used really two main
purposes either as a filtration aid or a
functional additive so if we're talking
thinking filtration aid we filter all
types of different juices we filter beer
wine sugar we filter oil and gas.
we're also into the biofuel and
biodiesel market so when you think
functional additives I'm talking about
de that goes into your paint to make it
flat instead of glossy we're talking
about de that is made into an
agglomerate which could be used for
kitty litter it can be used as a soil
amendment diatomaceous earth is made up
of things called diatoms and diatoms are
single-celled aquatic creatures
diatomaceous earth was formed 5 or 20
million years ago during a time when
Nevada was covered with sea with water
at the same time there's lots of
volcanic activity taking place the
volcanoes were spewing silica into these
lakes and sea beds and the silica then
was a nutrient or a food for the diatoms
and these diatoms thrived on the silica
and they just grew like crazy in these
Lakes some of the geologists I've talked
to predict that the rate of
sedimentation for the diatoms was about
one fingernail thickness per year so you
can see with hundreds of feet of
dynamite behind us it took millions of
years to fill up these lake beds with
diatoms
in the u.s. all of the enzyme producers
use diatomaceous earth in their process
to produce enzymes whether at home
you're using an enzyme in your detergent
to wash your clothes to make them whiter
brighter or whether the enzyme is being
used to produce a biofuel or a
biochemical or whether the enzyme is
used in the beer making process these
types of things touch our lives every
day
and it wouldn't be possible without the
diatomaceous earth that we're sitting on
at this moment I think a lot of folks
don't realize our dependency on natural
resources beyond those that are grown
steel for cars copper for electric
wiring cell phones rely heavily on
electronic components which is all
minerals that come out of the earth
despite Nevada being coined to silver
state during the silver rush of the late
1800s Nevada has become one of the
leading producers of gold in the world
gold is highly efficient and reliable as
a conductor it's found in small amounts
and most all electronic devices
computers and medical instruments thin
films of gold are used in aerospace as a
lubricant and also to reflect infrared
radiation you'll find gold in the
production of specialty glass for
climate control buildings the amount
used can be enhanced to create an
opulent look a favorite at Las Vegas
today the industries that extract these
minerals from the earth are required to
do reclamation where mining has taken
place but some of the scars of the past
still remain anaconda copper owned and
operated this mine in uring to Nevada
from 1952 to 1977
as a byproduct of their copper
production uranium and arsenic
contaminated the groundwater which
continues today the EPA has recently
announced it will be listed as a
Superfund site allowing 90% of the
cleanup to be paid by federal funds
state and local officials have protested
past attempts for a Superfund
designation out of concern for the
economic impacts especially on
agriculture though recently the governor
approved the designation with several
conditions including funding and
timeline assurances
despite the past issues presented by the
Anaconda site Durrington has approved
development of a new copper mining
project the city recently acquired
10,500 acres of public land in the
copper rich area we're only going to
keep a thousand twelve hundred acres of
it we're gonna convey nine thousand
acres of it back to Nevada copper for
their open pit mining operation and then
we're going to use the rest of the
property for recreational uses some
solar development possibly and some
commercial uses that will be mine
related the whole idea here is to make
sure that the infrastructure that Nevada
copper puts on this property is
beneficial to the city in 20 years for
us it's a win-win situation the city is
able to double their their area they're
gonna actually actually have for the
first time someplace to have an
industrial commercial zone that they
don't really have that capability but
this will definitely impact the county
and the city to school this trip the
fire district the hospital district
every tax entity in Mason Valley is
gonna get a piece of the pie what what
more could we ask for a project comes to
our small community with the potential
of 800 permanent jobs a way to find a
sustainable product that can keep people
employed for 22 years Plus behind me is
the head frame of our east shaft it's an
exploration shaft that is president
production size that we can when
mining does start in earnest that we can
be shifted to production shaft the
biggest use for copper is obviously for
electrical transmission electrical in
your cars in your houses in your cell
phones and your computers that's the
bulk of what coppers use for the average
vehicle contains between 40 and 80
pounds of copper and up to a mile of
copper wiring it's also the main
component of us coinage even nickels
dimes and quarters are mostly covered
it's also often combined with other
metals such as zinc to form brass used
abundantly in musical instruments mining
today is a heavily regulated industry as
they have to meet a stringent series of
state and federal regulations some of
which are the result of lobbying by
environmental groups there's reclamation
and there's reclamation and we worked
with Assemblywoman Vivian Freeman in the
90s on getting the first reclamation
bill through and they did not want to do
that you know Newmont came through
though and they'd read the other people
in the industry for reclamation in the
case of Newmont our operations in nevada
are covered by in excess of 535 permits
each of those permits has some version
of a monitoring and reporting
requirement those permits cover all
components of our business ranging from
protection of air and water quality to
closure and reclamation to long term
monitoring they know we're watching they
know that we have we like to have
conversations we like to discuss issues
when they come up and we feel as though
this has improved practices by the
industry itself and also has improved
the sort of the oversight at the state
level we have two primary goals one is
to protect waters of the state and the
other is to create a productive
post-mining land use and that's done
through our reclamation program so we
have two sets of permitting processes
one is a
Pollution Control Department and the
other is a reclamation permit before a
mine can even open most mines can even
open they have to post a reclamation
bond and they do that because there's a
history of mines going out of business
and then not being able to clean up the
the the messes that they've made during
the mining process so before they can
even get a permit to actually do the
mining they generate these bonds there
are modeling programs that that we
actually can run and determine what that
bond price should be in the case of
Newmont we are currently posting and
holding reclamation financial assurances
of about 1.2 billion dollars to cover
our activities so bonds are held for the
life of the mine until reclamation
success is achieved and demonstrated to
the satisfaction of the agencies
one of the consequences of an open-pit
mine is a development of a pit lake
after mining operations cease pit lakes
are created in a number of ways for
mining but but the most common is that
the ore body is actually present below
the groundwater table it's actually
sitting within the groundwater in order
to access that poorer body they need to
pump the water out from around the ore
body and then go in and and excavate it
out and and beneficiate that or so what
you have left over is a large pit that
is historically been below the water
table and when mining stops and they
stop pumping the water the groundwater
flows back into that large pit or that
hole in the ground and a pit lake is the
results the problem is the trade-off
then where you're sucking that water
from mountains from Meadows from streams
from Springs from the Humboldt River
you're sucking that all to fill those
pits and then you're denying you know
nature and those other areas or if
you're a farmer you know and seeing your
well coat down as a result you know
you're denying all that
it's important not to over extract
groundwater that's the key and broadband
can go in and and we have hydrogen
geologists that will do modeling of the
groundwater Reserve and try to determine
a correct rate of withdraw most of the
water that was D watered out of this pit
and it flows back in is from the deep
aquifers the bedrock aquifers it's not
from the alluvial aquifer and the
alluvial aquifer is what mainly feeds
the river and as also provides the water
source for most municipal and
agricultural wells and other water
sources so some of the water you know
the water that comes out from dewatering
which is the removal of the water so you
can access the ore body is under some
some pretty stringent requirements from
the division of water resources with the
state of Nevada they mandate that that
water needs to number one go back into
the aquifer Yury inject it back from
where it came or if you can't do that
number two you can substitute it for a
beneficial use depending on the year it
can range for about 15 to 20 percent of
the water we pump is actually used at
the mind some of that's actually used in
irrigation at the ranch's irrigation
pivots and then a smaller fraction is
actually used to produce the the
billions of dollars of gold wealth that
comes out of the gold mines themselves
water use you have to be very careful
how you define what you mean by use
because most of most of what we pump
ends up right back in the ground in
association with an expansion of carlin
operations environmental review
identified the potential for impact to
some Springs and seeps in the maggot
Creek watershed from that the company in
concert with the Bureau of Land
Management US Fish and Wildlife Service
Nevada Department of Wildlife Trout
Unlimited and a neighboring ranch
Maggie Creek Ranch formed the magnific
watershed restoration project that
effort began in 1993 and here are some -
more than two decades later we have
tremendous success in restoration in the
watershed scale what we collectively
have been able to do is improve recover
and improve degraded riparian habitats
and establish connectivity for Lahontan
cutthroat trout some environmental
groups would like to see additional
regulations that would require more post
mining restoration of Pitt Lakes they
have to D water for those for those very
deep pits and so forth what happens when
they're done with the mining when
they're finished mining there's no
reclamation required for the pit for the
open pit there's some analysis they have
discussions with the state agency but
they're not required to reclaim them and
they'll become lakes afterwards so we
feel like this is something that needs
to be addressed this is a an area which
was once an area of land that was open
to the public and we think that should
be reclaimed for public use in some way
while reclamation of pit lakes it would
turn them into a public use is not
currently required maintenance of the
water quality is part of the closure
responsibilities of the mining companies
in this particular pit lake we have a
very seasonal and what we consider to be
temporary low pH in the surface water of
the lonetree pit lake it happens in the
summertime when the temperature and the
sunlight becomes more intense it starts
to warm the surface of the lake we
actively manage that and treat that we
add lime and trona and we're testing a
variety of other alkalinity agents to
buffer that pH so what makes generates
low pH in the water is a sulfide mineral
in the wall rock it's naturally
occurring because it was deep in the
earth it was not oxidized it wasn't
exposed to oxygen
once we mined that and exposes it to
oxygen and water it can generate a weak
acid most of the pit lakes in Nevada are
sinks and because of that there is no
outflow from the pit
because in Nevada the evaporation is
greater than the inflow rate the
majority of the Pitt lakes are sinks one
unique example of a Pitt Lake that has
been restored for use by the public is
right in the middle of the city of
sparks right behind me is a pit lake
the sparks marina is is a former gravel
pit that is being used for recreational
purposes some of the other pit Lakes
however have extraordinarily steep wall
sites sometimes the water is a very low
level and it wouldn't be safe for the
public to access those Lakes
this was the the Helm's pit it was a
sand and gravel operation that removed
aggregates and other materials for use
in construction from around the Truckee
Meadows and around northwestern Nevada
and the city leaders of Sparks at the
time made a fantastic determination that
this could be used as an amenity for the
city of Sparks and turned into a
recreational lake and that's what we see
behind me right now
because the ground water levels in the
city of Sparks were very high or almost
right at the surface in order to keep
this an adequate recreational amenities
beaches in place and to really keep
groundwater levels from inundating the
city of Sparks a certain amount of water
is pumped out of the lake on a daily
basis is treated and discharged with a
permit from the Nevada Division of
Environmental Protection to the Truckee
River while most Pitt lakes won't end up
a recreational area for the public they
are a consequence of open pit mining
operations from an industry meeting the
demands of a society I think there's
some places that shouldn't be mined
there's some places that that can be
mined and and that are fine but you know
gold mining you know which is
essentially for trinkets we we have all
the gold we need basically it is not
necessary for survival in any form but
but we are gonna have to extract
minerals from the ground in order for
society to continue Gold is not one of
those minerals though well I mean this
is this is an interesting question about
the use of precious metals about eight
percent eight point six percent goes to
electronics and about two point six
percent goes to industrial uses the rest
of it goes to financial industry
financing and the bulk of it goes to
jewelry in 2013 the United States
consumed nearly 200 tons of gold
while India consumed over 974 tons and
China the world's largest consumer 1,132
tons I think what mining companies are
beginning to see also is that oh there's
a lot of other minerals that we kind of
passed over earlier because because
Gold's more profitable mining company
general moly is developing to molybdenum
mines in Nevada it really only came into
widespread use in the second half of the
20th century and it's used in steel to
increase the strength of the steel and
its corrosion resistance its ability to
adapt to temperatures and it's weld
ability it's especially used in things
like military armaments high stress
Steel's jet aircraft it's also used in
ordinary Steel's that you'd use for
infrastructure development pipelines
bridges we've got operations in Nevada
because we've got to really high quality
deposits our Mount Hope project appear
north of Eureka where we're at today is
what we consider a world-class deposit
it's the project that we intend to
develop first it's a big deposit they
would pretty much they would do a large
open pit and they would remove most of
the mountain it's not a big mountain but
they would remove most of it but to the
west and to the north has a lot of
recreation there's wilderness study
areas near there there's so there's
they're sensitive water and ecosystem
issues as well as agricultural issues
there's a lot of things converging on
that site there are some concerns with
impacts us my job is to make sure that
we minimize our impacts and mitigate any
impacts that we do have the permitting
has been a long
it's very involved but we've involved
the county and the individual
stakeholders throughout the process
Nevada also mined silica used for making
glass as well as beright another mineral
few of us even know about whilst the
bear right here is used in the energy in
the petroleum industry the buried is
crushed out here I'd argenta and up up
in dumphy and they ship it to the oil
fields and what it does its prevents
blowouts when you're drilling makes its
help heavy enough that if they hit a gas
pocket it won't blow back up the pipe in
heaven flame out in the past decade to
demand for lithium a metal found in
brines and clays has increased as
lithium ion batteries have the highest
electric output and lightest weight of
any battery material ever used most all
advanced electronics including cell
phones and computers use lithium
batteries but one of the largest
consumers are companies manufacturing
electric vehicles Tesla who is building
a massive battery plant known as a Giga
Factory in Northern Nevada will produce
more lithium batteries than all of the
current producers in the world combined
currently global demand is being met by
Chile and Australia which mines 75% of
the world's lithium though devadasis
covered has one of the largest deposits
in North America
lithium Nevada Corporation in the north
part of the state is exploring this
deposit and awaiting feasibility studies
to begin mining operations
Nevada also has several gypsum mines
gypsum like diatomaceous earth formed
back when this area of Nevada was
covered with ocean and also is used
heavily in agriculture in the western
part of the United States who don't have
a lot of rainfall and the drought has
exasperated the the the presence of a
lot of these salts that are present in
the groundwater and integration water
that they're using in California and and
in other parts in the western United
States we want to be adding calcium from
the gypsum to counteract that effect
that regain of a healthy balance in the
soil profile for the plants when you get
on into California Oregon and Washington
it becomes less predominant and as a
result many truckers are going very good
distance to come to this location to get
some good quality gypsum they use the
gypsum or the anhydride that we mined
here as a retarder in in the curing of
cement so it is used as a another
amendment for construction much of the
gypsum that was used to rebuild San
Francisco came from this mine there was
a trolley affair that ran from this mine
down to the railroad tracks and loaded
the rail rail cars that headed to San
Francisco so it is this mine has been
around for a very long time
there are several industrial mineral
mines in Southern Nevada which helped
fuel the continued growth of Las Vegas I
think the key thing to remember is that
everyone is impacting the environment
all the time mines of course as well I
think to a certain degree yes mines have
the ability to impact far greater than a
lot of other industries however because
we know that this the stringent
regulations that have been put in place
are there for a reason just because of
the potential impacts we have a
professional environmental team here we
try to stay ahead of where the
regulator's will want us to be we've
taken steps in water management and air
emissions you know this is the most
regulated country in the world when it
comes to Environmental Management we
have a reputation to protect and we do
everything we possibly can in that area
while mining reclamation can't return
all the landscape that's been altered
back to what it was there is a
connection to be drawn between the
minerals extracted and the
infrastructure transportation and
technology we rely on which alters yet
another landscape
you
on the next episode
the Nevada mining series we will present
how technology has transformed mining
into high-tech modern prospecting we'll
investigate what Nevada has gained and
lost from exploration modernized
operations and reclamation of our
environment
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