Mining Pollution

Hazardous Pollution Created by Mining Activities

Sep 28, 2009

Mining activities benefit communities by supplying jobs and creating resources. However, many of these communities also have to deal with the resulting toxic pollution.

There are several mining operations through out the United States that mine different materials. Coal, various metals and other subterranean materials are mined because they are valuable to the economy and they are depended on for every day living. Mining these materials, however, has led to the pollution of the environment. In some cases, the hazards associated with this pollution is mitigated and the impact is minimum. In other cases, the impact is so detrimental, that whole areas are evacuated and considered toxic to humans.

The Negative Impacts of Mining

There are several negative impacts that mining can have on the local area. These include:

Deforestation occurs when mining companies cut down trees and other vegetation to allow for better access to buried mineral resources. This has a very negative impact on the environment because forests that have been in the area, some more than hundreds of years, are removed. This threatens the ecosystem that has thrived within these forested areas. Loss of biodiversity occurs as plants and animals are no longer able to inhabit the area. Moreover, the surface sediment becomes loose and is very easily eroded, causing further harm to the land.

Contamination of ground and surface water is an inevitable consequence of mining. Chemicals such as arsenic, sulfur and mercury are released either at the surface or within ground water wells as mining operations progress. Natural scrubbing materials present in the bedrock, such as limestone and other calcareous strata, are removed to gain access to the valuable mineral resources. As rain water runoff soaks into the ground, these missing layers are not able to filter the toxic chemicals out of the runoff. Runoff containing poisonous chemicals makes its way into the area's watershed, polluting groundwater and streams.

Exposure to air and mixture with water causes a chemical reaction that produces acid water. This acid mine drainage (AMD) is a very large pollution problem related to mines, especially those that have been abandoned. AMD and other toxic chemicals also pollute the soil, making regrowth of vegetation almost impossible, even years after mining operations have ended.

Abandoned Mining Towns

On June 30, 2009, CNN highlighted a story on its website about a mining town that suffered from severe and toxic pollution. The pollution had become so bad, that a government program was actually paying the entire town of Picher, Oklahoma to evacuate. The pollution poisoning this town originated from the mining of lead and zinc. The outcomes of mining these valuable mineral resource were lead poisoning in the children, whole houses collapsing into underground mine shafts and the local Tar Creek colored orange with heavy metals. Gravel piles, called "chat" piles, containing toxic chemicals are stacked right up against houses throughout the town's neighborhoods.

In 2006, the U.S. government declared the area a Superfund Site, which is part of the government's toxic waste clean-up program and began paying citizens of the area to leave. Since then, remediation efforts to clean up the ground and surface water and soils has been ongoing.

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