Bryce Dawkins
Paragraph 1: After reading this article and understanding the benefits and consequences if mining. I doubt I will be visiting and mines or working in any mines in the near future. But seriously it’s dangerous, I can’t imagine being a miner in this time period. Having no idea if the air will kill you, the walls surrounding you or the equipment you use. But through the years and centuries just as we humans always do we create, battle, and eventually conquer the amazing land we have been given. Technological advances have helped in many ways with mining, I only know a few just like all of you. But some have made the finding of earths elements easier along with allowing us as people to exploit and use these materials. I’m not sure what came first, what started this new wave of “efficient” and “safe” mining. Hard rock mining in my eyes was a risky success. Drilling or digging that hard and fast seems to be to good to be true. Hard rock mining was a more aggressive approach to mining, allowing humans to dig at a much faster pace and to extract the needed elements quicker. But as with all things there are consequences to this form of mining. One you are digging deeper into the earth, allowing the window for collapse to become more and more possible. Second with digging so deep the air ventilation is not as it is on the surface, causing it to be stuffer and harder to breathe. Another “good” form of mining would be the roman way of Hydraulic mining. Hydraulic mining used water pressure and water hoses to blast away rock and gravel to get to the element of your choosing. While this is a creative and easier way of mining it also causes huge economic problems. Hydraulic mining causes the downstream rivers to become choked, destroyed fisheries and cover farmland with unusable soil and gravel.
Paragraph 2: WOW, first word to mind is WOW. Mining as I stated before is very dangerous, there’s no guarantee you will make it home that day. When the mines close down and you leave that mine for the last time is a great feeling I bet, but what you didn’t think about or prepare for is the many years in the future that, that mine will cause harm. Mining does horrible things to the environment from choking rivers, destroying fisheries and destroying fertile crops. All of these things are the cause of mining but the zombie mines are the real killers. To stop this trend of mines coming back to haunt us I believe we first must take a look at the landscape we wish to exploit. Take a look at what could be affected in the proximity of the mine. While operating a mine see what materials that are harmful to the environment that we will be smelting and find a safe location with possible permafrost that can maintain these hazardous elements. And for the final thought of what to do with a mine once it is no longer in use. My honest opinion or thought is that there is no answer to the Zombie mine problem that doesn’t take half a billion dollars to fix. We read the article and we all understand, there seems to be more mines than there is money to fix the problem.