Electrical Energy and Choice

Using electrical energy is a lot like driving a car. We seldom think of the risks attached until a problem occurs. We flip a switch and turn on whatever device we need to use, whether that’s an air conditioner, computer, toaster, or a TV and think nothing of it. Like magic, it’s there when we need it. For most of us, electrical power is just a genie in a box that operates unseen.

The rate at which Americans consume electrical power is the world’s highest. According to a 2009 survey conducted by the UN, on a per person basis we use more than twice the rate of people in the European Union, which is in second place. Without finding fault, our lifestyle is energy intensive. So be it. That situation seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

The reality of producing all that power is complex. No source of electrical energy is free from risk or challenges. Let’s review a few of the significant energy issues that most Americans tend to ignore or are indifferent to.

Coal is a good place to start since it accounts for about 50 percent of our electrical energy. In terms of smokestack emissions, coal-fired power plants produce about 25 percent of our nitrogen oxides (nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide), a key ingredient of smog, one-third of the country’s carbon dioxide, 40 percent of the mercury, and two-thirds of our sulfur dioxide, which when combined with atmospheric water vapor produces acid rain. Putting the hazards of carbon dioxide aside, mercury is a well-known carcinogen. It can poison fish in bodies of water hundreds of miles from the coal-burning plant. As a potent neurotoxin, mercury has been demonstrated to cause reduced intelligence in hundreds of thousands of children each year. At the average coal-fired plant, mercury is injected into the atmosphere at rates of approximately 25 pounds per 100 megawatts, making those plants as a group the largest contributor of airborne mercury pollution in the U.S.

Here’s another little-known fact that may surprise readers. In March 2011, the highly respected American Lung Association (ALA) released a report (Toxic Air: The Case For Cleaning Up Coal-Fired Power Plants) that stated: “Particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year.” The ALA report singled out coal-fired power plants as producing more hazardous air pollution in the U.S. than any other source of industrial pollution.

When compared to coal-fired power plants, natural gas-fired plants, which produce slightly less than 25 percent of the U.S. power supply, emit substantially fewer pollutants: about half as much carbon dioxide, and several hundred times less sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulates. Although those fewer emissions may seem to be positive factors, the fine particulates that gas-fired plants emit have significant adverse human health effects because they by-pass our bodies' natural respiratory filters and can penetrate deep into the lungs. A number of scientific studies have found no safe exposure to those particulates.

Nuclear plants produce materials that generate radiation and may come into contact with people through small releases during routine plant operation, accidental releases during operation that range from small to catastrophic, accidents in transporting radioactive materials, and escape of radioactive wastes from confinement. The principal risks associated with nuclear power arise from health effects of radiation since subatomic particles are able to penetrate deep inside the human body where they can damage biological cells and cause cancer. If radiation affects fetal development, genetic diseases may result. It should be noted that recent technical improvements in nuclear power generation have greatly decreased many of the above risks though no new plants using those advances have been built in the U.S., largely because of the onerous regulatory process and environmental activism.

Solar power is one of the two current darlings of environmentalists but owns its share of risk. Although solar cells generate no pollution during operation the area required for a large-scale solar power generating station is considerable, as is evidenced by the 21 million acres of arid and semi-arid public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah the federal government designated for the solar power industry to engage in industrial-scale solar development. That public acreage is more than the federal government has opened for oil and gas exploration over the last ten plus years and will be severely damaged as natural habitat for the foreseeable future if developed as intended.

Wind power is not free from risk or environmental hazards. Witness the hundreds of birds, including dozens of eagles in California alone that have died recently as a result of fatal collisions with rotating turbine blades. Other negative effects include potentially irreversible destruction of thousands of square miles of natural habitat, and visual and noise pollution. It should be noted that health risks to humans from both solar and wind power are negligible.

Our choices in power generation should be clear but aren’t. Witness the shameless propensity of supporters of one technology or another to flat out lie in national advertising campaigns about the benefits of that technology. Nor do Americans seem the least bit interested in reducing our enormous per capita energy consumption. Heaven forbid.

My guess is we’ll stumble along with our present system well into the foreseeable future with lobbyists from non-renewable energy industries wining and dining members of Congress and funneling megabucks into their re-election campaigns while expecting and receiving favorable treatment. It’ll be business as usual while each year many thousands of Americans suffer avoidable health problems and deaths from hazardous by-products of electrical power generation.

Oh, well. It’s a system we have freely chosen.

Environmental Consequences of Underground Mining #3

Real World Examples/Real World Problems: Several examples should give readers a better understanding of the nature of the very real challenges associated with underground mining. The first example is perhaps the most chilling illustration of mining gone terribly wrong anywhere in the world. Russia’s greatest mineral district, with extensive gold, thorium, and uranium deposits is located a remote region of Siberia known as Chita, near the headwaters for both Lake Baikal, the world’s largest lake, and the Amur River, one of the world’s largest rivers. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the resultant near chaos into which the Russian economy has descended, pressure has increased to extract natural resources at an even faster pace than before to generate increasing wealth for the new owners of the resources.

However, the critical issues facing increased mineral extraction are not the resources themselves but the many severe public health and environmental problems that persist throughout Chita that were directly caused by mining activities. Both the gold and thorium mines of Balei (with gold reserves approaching $3 billion) and the uranium mines of Krasnokamensk (which is among the largest uranium complexes in the world) provide stark evidence of mines that were operated for decades without the slightest concern for reclamation, pollution control, or human health and safety. When anyone observes the devastated landscapes of large-scale pollution in Chita, the term ecological disaster instantly springs to mind.

The well-documented radiation exposure situation at Balei (also spelled Baley) from unreclaimed and open Soviet-era gold and thorium pits and other waste piles includes extensive areas in the urban settlement characterized by high indoor and outdoor radiation and multi-generational disease patterns in local families living in adversely affected homes. Not surprisingly, areas of extreme health problems are coincident with areas of high residential radiation exposure and pollution by contaminated water. A particularly alarming example of the severity of the multiple threats to human health is the fact that 95 percent of the children in areas affected by thorium exposure have been diagnosed with one or more congenital or chronic diseases or handicaps.

Large-scale pollution problems at Krasnokamensk, the most important uranium production site in the former Soviet Union, include groundwater damage from a large and expanding plume of acidic tailings seepage, a contaminated streambed that was used to move large quantities of untreated radioactive mine water, high indoor radon levels, and hundreds of millions of tons of unreclaimed radioactive mine and mill waste piles in areas open to wind and water erosion.

Both Balei and Krasnokamensk paint compelling images of the heartless and cruelly exploitative practices of Soviet-era mining. The history of non-existent environmental management and protection efforts during the Soviet-era and the present lack of legal enforcement programs to support and direct a technically competent clean-up effort in post-Soviet Russia have combined with a distinct lack of will to invest financial resources in modern remediation programs. The horrific and scarcely imaginable results (to most North Americans and Western Europeans) include the continued use of homes in areas of high radiation and water pollution and the consequent continued exposure of human populations, including children, to the most severe threats imaginable to health, safety, and survival.

Not much closer to home geographically is the case of the Canadian mining firm, Placer Dome, which has a thirty-year history in the Philippines of one large-scale mining disaster after another.[1] From 1975 to 1991, Placer Dome oversaw the surface disposal via pipeline from the Tapian mine on the island of Marinduque of more than 200 million tons of mine tailings directly into the shallow waters of Calancan Bay. The tailings covered 30 square miles of coral reefs and seagrasses in the Bay, severely affecting the food security of residents of twelve fishing villages in the area. A large portion of the tailings are currently exposed in the Bay and particulates are regularly blown by winds into nearby villages. Metals are also leaching from the tailings into the Bay and are thought to be the source of lead and other heavy metal contamination found in children from villages around the Bay. A State of Calamity for health reasons was declared in 1998 by the Philippine Government for Calancan Bay villages because of that contamination. Since then all the children from the area have been treated for lead detoxification in Manila. Placer Dome never bothered to ask villagers living around Calancan Bay for permission for the dumping and the villagers have never been compensated for their various losses. The tailings dumping was not halted by Placer Dome until 1991, and only then because the Tapian Mine was depleted. Today, Placer Dome officials hold up their hands in righteous innocence and bleat that the company complied with all applicable laws and regulations then in force.

Author’s Rant #1: By the way, did I mention that Placer Dome’s 60 percent ownership partner in the Tapian mine was none other than ex-President and dictator Ferdinand Marcos? So, why on Earth would they be worried about Philippine law? Grease, brother, grease is the name of the game.

In 1991, Placer Dome’s joint venture, Marcopper, constructed an earthen dam in the mountainous headwaters of the Mogpog River to prevent silt from a waste dump for the then new San Antonio mine from entering the River. Although people living in the town of Mogpog vigorously opposed the dam, fearing adverse consequences for the River they used for food, watering animals, and washing. In 1993, the dam burst, flooding downstream villages and sweeping away two children, houses, water buffaloes and other livestock, and destroying crops. Marcopper’s Resident Manager, Placer Dome’s Steve Reid, vehemently denied responsibility, blaming unusual rainfall from a typhoon.

Author’s Rant #2: Wait just one minute. Wouldn’t every responsible mining firm have planned and engineered for such likelihood? Especially since the mine was located in the tropical Philippines where typhoons are a regular occurrence. But nobody’s perfect, right? The kicker is that when the dam was rebuilt an overflow structure was added for the first time, an implicit acknowledgement of the incompetence of the original design and construction. The bad news is that within two years of that reconstruction so much toxic waste had accumulated behind the dam that contaminated water flowed freely through the overflow structure into the River, severely affecting aquatic wildlife downstream.

Not to be discouraged by years of past failures, Marcopper and Placer Dome marched full steam ahead with mining operations until March 24, 1996, when another massive tailings spill at the Marcopper Mine filled the 26-kilometer-long Boac River with between three and four million tons of metal-enriched and acid generating tailings. The spill occurred when a poorly sealed drainage tunnel at the base of the Tapian Mine failed. The mined-out pit, located high in the central mountains of Marinduque, had been used since 1992 as storage for tailings from the adjacent San Antonio mine. Adding insult to injury, in 1997, Placer Dome divested from Marcopper through a wholly owned Cayman Island holding company called MR Holdings. In 2001, Placer Dome abandoned the Philippines and left the people of Marinduque with heavily polluted and toxic ecosystems.

In October 2005, Placer Dome Inc. was named the sole defendant in a $100 million lawsuit for environmental rehabilitation and compensation to area residents. The suit was filed by the Provincial Government of the Island of Marinduque, Philippines, with the District Court in Clark County, Nevada. It asserts Placer Dome is responsible for environmental degradation with consequent economic damages and adverse effects to the health of people living in the vicinity of the Marcopper mine that was owned and operated by Marcopper Mining Corporation (40 percent owned by Placer Dome). In 2006, Placer Dome was purchased by and assimilated into Barrick Gold. Barrick inherited the litigation and as of early 2012 is waging a lengthy legal battle to avoid legal responsibility. Since lawsuits more often resemble a crap game rather than rational discourse, interested readers will have to pay close attention to determine the eventual outcome.

Author’s Rant #3: Although underground mining is not usually characterized by as many environmental hazards as is open pit or strip mining, many of the environmental consequences can be so severe that the environment may be damaged for many centuries, if not forever (in terms of human occupance), especially owing to acid leaching and the contamination of surface and groundwater sources. The only solution is enforcement of meaningful regulations specifically crafted to prevent such destruction. Naturally, those regulations are part of the political process and therein lays the flaw. Politicians get elected by persuading voters that they are the best candidates for the job. To do that, politicians must get their messages out to the public. And, for national elections, that activity requires huge piles of money. The easiest way to build political campaign funds is to go to people with the money, meaning rich people and corporations willing to part with their dough. But those people typically make their money from investments. So they generally see a campaign contribution as an investment, at the very least, to secure access to the politicians when they want something. Like relaxed environmental regulations that will result in their making more money. And so it goes. For more detailed technical information, see: Roderick G. Eggert, ed., Mining and the Environment: International Perspectives on Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1994; Charles N. Alpers, John L. Jambor, and D. Kirk Nordstrom, eds., “Sulfate minerals: crystallography, geochemistry, and environmental significance,” Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, vol. 40. Mineralogical Society of America and the Geochemical Society, 608 pp. 2000. National Research Council, Committee on Superfund Site Assessment and Remediation in the Coeur d’ Alene River Basin, Superfund and Mining Megasites: Lessons from the Coeur d’Alene River Basin. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005.

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[1] Source: Catherine Coumans, Ph.D: “Philippine Province Files Suit Against Placer Dome — Background Report,” Tuesday October 4, 2005, Mining Watch Canada: online source:

http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/Placer_Dome/Marinduque_suit_backgnd.

Environmental Consequences of Underground Mining #2

Terrestrial Vegetation Disturbances of natural, quasi-natural, or cultural landscapes inevitably result in changes in composition and structure of plant species, disrupt soil strata, and stimulate invasion by disturbed-site plant species that in turn can alter composition of local invertebrate and other associated species and habitat. Those disturbances may be associated with development of roads or use of off-road vehicles during exploration activities. Smelter and other mining facility emissions may also act to fumigate plant communities adjacent to mineral processing facilities through releases of toxic materials, such as sulfur dioxide (SO₂), which is often lethal to foliage and consequently to the plant itself. Increasing distance from the pollution source generally results in the plant community composition gradually returning to pre-disturbance conditions. However, long-term smelter emissions have historically adversely affected surrounding forest ecosystems, habitats, biodiversity, and soils.

Real World Examples include areas around Anaconda, Montana; Coeur D’Alene, Idaho; Salt Lake City, Utah; La Oroya, Peru; Haina, Dominican Republic; Tianying, China; and Norilsk, Russia, where much of the landscape surrounding mining/smelting facilities remains devoid of trees and other natural vegetation. Toxic metals from mining processes, as contaminants in the air, have the potential to affect terrestrial vegetation by settling onto soils or foliage and then being taken up by plants. Soils, vegetation, and wildlife habitat in areas affected by smelter emissions have been shown to contain elevated concentrations of metals, severely affecting vegetation abundance and species diversity. In addition, reclamation procedures that specify the use of non-native species may decrease the distribution of native species. Obviously, the injection of heavy metal particulates (including lead, copper, mercury, selenium, zinc, uranium, nickel, chromium, and others) and various noxious and hazardous gases (such as sulfur dioxide) into the atmosphere and such hazardous chemicals as cyanides and chlorobenzenes into surface and ground water systems has drastically and adversely affected the health and life spans of individuals, especially children, residing in areas around those mining facilities.

Terrestrial Wildlife: Mining activities may disrupt terrestrial wildlife, starting from exploration, operation of off-road vehicles, location of drillhead or mine pads, construction of permanent or semi-permanent long-distance haul roads or railroads, and combinations of mining-milling-smelting operations. Adverse effects include migration disruption of small mammals and changes in behavioral patterns for larger animals by destroying habitat, fragmenting territories, creating barriers to movement, and interfering with normal nesting/dening reproductive activities, potentially reducing the population of various affected species. Consumption of toxic plants and animals by terrestrial wildlife, waterfowl, and migratory birds may result in the accumulation of toxic materials through bioconcentration, potentially creating toxic levels of metals and other chemicals in those organisms and in prey species, including humans.

Water Quality issues result from acid drainage, construction of roads or railroads, metals (e.g., antimony, arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium) and cyanide contamination, placer mining, pit lakes that concentrate metals and other contaminants, and surplus water drainage. Each of those issues can also generate long-term adverse effects on aquatic biota, aquatic habitat, and water chemistry, many of which are incredibly persistent. What should be a wake-up call but is often pointedly ignored by rosy-eyed mining advocates and their pet, bend-over politicians is that lead mines that were operational at the time of the Roman Empire are still producing acid drainage 2,000 years later. On August 5, 2015, EPA personnel and workers for an environmental restoration firm under federal contract to mitigate pollutants from the Gold King Mine, which had been closed for one hundred  years, accidentally caused a breach to a tailing pond, resulting in the catastrophic release of three million gallons of toxic lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other highly hazardous chemicals into the Animas River near Silverton, Colorado, and further downstream into the San Juan River, which is heavily used for drinking water and agriculture. As of mid-2016, the Gold King Mine continues to discharge acid mine drainage at a rate of about 600 gallons per minute. And that mine is one of at least 20,000 abandoned mines in Colorado alone, only a small fraction of which have been properly remediated.

Water Quantity issues include the following. Mine water discharges to streams from dewatering can adversely affect riparian vegetation, cause increased erosion, alter the stream regime with respect to natural hydro-period and therefore alter or destroy habitat. Groundwater withdrawal may adversely affect local water tables for many decades. For example, groundwater withdrawn from the Santa Cruz River Basin in southern Arizona for mineral processing at a nearby copper mine has lowered the water table by many meters and has altered the River’s flow characteristics. Runoff from hardened surfaces, especially roads and parking lots, produce more runoff to nearby streams than would be expected that may carry complex hydrocarbons, metals, and other pollutants from vehicles and sediment from roads or roadside areas. Impervious surfaces accelerate runoff during storms and reduce moisture percolating into the ground, potentially affecting stream hydrological functions, changing sediment transport characteristics, and altering habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms. Changes in regional hydrology (such as changes in hydrologic head) owing to mining activities have the potential to adversely affect wetlands, especially in the arid Southwest that are dependent on a continuous supply of water particularly at spring orifices, which often support threatened or endangered species. Even small changes in the hydrologic head may lower the local or regional water table several yards and may result in the drying up of springs and associated wetlands.

Other adverse consequences of mining activities that are not discussed in detail in this post include adverse effects on human health, tunnel collapse, surface subsidence, disruption of social networks and systems, land use changes, boom-and bust pressures on nearby communities in terms of sudden and often unanticipated demand for schools, public safety services, housing, transportation, social and medical services, recreation and entertainment, and rapid changes in local and regional real estate markets with mine start-up and closure, etc.

A Crooked-Neck Bird

A crooked-neck bird

high overhead

flies on long pointed wings.

It is the season's first

a sure sign of Spring

at last.

Bereft of Field Guide and binoculars

it remains anonymous

unidentified

beating its graceful way southwest.

Solitary

unknown

unattached to Earth

it mocks our journey through life.

The Cleansing Rubefacient Wind

Buffeted by the wind

alone I stand

silent at cliff’s edge

watching hawks above

effortlessly wheel on fast-rising thermals.

Majestic, marvelous

they soar on feathered sinews

grace and beauty idealized

renew they my spirit

filling me with delight.

When weary I grow of technology’s relentless pace

and ambition’s double-edge sword

I am pulled to the simplicity of hawks

circling at cliff’s edge

and the cleansing rubefacient wind.

Environmental Consequences of Underground Mining #1

Underground mining is the extraction of minerals of economic value that lie below the Earth’s surface, their conveyance to the surface, and processing (including ore handling, crushing, milling, screening-separation, washing, concentration, and smelting). Shafts and tunnels linked to the surface provide access to the ore-bearing vein, layer, or host rock. Every step of underground or hardrock mining, from exploration, development on mining infrastructure, through post-closure, has the potential to generate adverse environmental and social consequences. In addition to the obvious disturbance of the land surface through construction of roads and a great number of mining-milling operations, mining may affect to varying degrees air, aquatic organisms, ground and surface waters, socioeconomic patterns, soils, terrestrial vegetation, and wildlife resources. Certain of the key adverse effects are outlined below and discussed briefly.[1]

Air Quality issues generated by mining-milling-smeltering operations include emissions of particulates, fugitive dust, odors, and sulfuric acid that can produce extensive regional air pollution through sulfuric deposition and acidification of streams and lakes that in turn can cause adverse changes in aquatic biotic composition and chemical processes. Those adverse atmospheric effects can be felt many hundreds of miles from the mining source in cities and even other countries. The above issues associated with the atmosphere around or in the vicinity of surface operations can also adversely affect air within underground mines and is of great consequence, especially to those inside the mine. Heat, dust, oxygen deficiency, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen oxide, methane and other natural gases, and hydrocarbon aerosols among others can result in poisoning, explosions, fatigue, disorientation, asphyxia, and death.

Aquatic Biota can be adversely affected by mining in three ways. First, cyanide and metals that are toxic to aquatic life even at low concentrations can seriously impair the functioning of natural and cultural aquatic ecosystems. Second, acid drainage and leaching of materials with high concentrations of sulfates and chlorides can adversely affect pH requirements and result in precipitations that can coat stream beds with iron-rich and heavy metal-rich cements, impairing habitat for fish and macro-invertebrates by reducing the spaces between gravels with very fine-grained sediment, threatening egg survival through oxygen deprivation; those adverse acid drainage effects have been known to persist in some mines for centuries. Third, placer mining in active streams can disturb or completely destroy stream bed sediments that provide habitat for macro-invertebrates and spawning habitat for salmonids.

Landscape/Ecosystem Alterations can be caused by exploration or access roads, construction of mining-smelting infrastructure — such as cranes, hoists, conveyor systems, buildings, electrical substations and distribution lines, power generating equipment and facilities, workshops, showers and decontamination facilities, testing labs, wastewater treatment facilities, offices, parking-vehicle storage areas, material storage, and smelters, etc. — the use of mechanized equipment such as off-road vehicles, drill rigs, or seismic exploration vehicles and construction-operation of mining activities in previously remote, roadless, mountainous regions, high latitudes, or wetlands where human activity had resulted in little alteration of relatively pristine ecosystems.

Natural Riparian Vegetation has been damaged and decreased and even totally destroyed when valleys have been used as sites for placing waste rock in areas where mountaintop removal is practiced. Obviously, if a valley is filled with several hundred feet of waste rock, the vegetation, habitat, and the valley itself will be drastically altered and most likely can never be restored. Other mining activities that adversely affect riparian vegetation include the placement of leach pads, tailings impoundments, and even major mining-milling facilities. In some areas, particularly but not exclusively in the American Southwest, mining activities can potentially consume much if not all the locally available water through extensive dewatering and groundwater withdrawal, which may affect surface flow and disrupt shallow and even regional aquifers and spring flows with the effects of stressing riparian vegetation, causing either reduced vigor or mortality. Contaminated substrates can be created when metal-contaminated water and sediments reach wetlands or settle along streams in wetland or riparian zones, adversely affecting plants that take up metals and store them in foliage and stems. In addition, contaminated soils and sediments from mine sites can negatively affect stream bank, stream bed, and floodplain sediments, as well as down-gradient wetlands and riparian systems located at some distance from mining activities.[2]

Noise and Vibration from heavy equipment, blasting, and milling operations at mine facilities adjacent to rural residential settlement or larger communities may cause people to abandoned their homes and move away or change their behavior in an effort to avoid adverse effects. Research conducted over the past thirty years, particularly into noise from aircraft operations on human receptors, has demonstrated that constant noise and vibration can cause serious physical and emotional impairment in human as well as animal populations.

Surface and Sub-Surface Soils can be altered, indurated, contaminated, or otherwise adversely affected by road building or mining construction to certain depths below the surface such that short-term and even mid-term recovery following reclamation is problematic. The fairly intense disturbance of soil surfaces by mining activities may make soils susceptible to water and wind erosion, thus contributing to sediment loading in local or regional stream systems that reduce water quality and aquatic habitat. Chemical particulates and metals from smelter emissions and blowing tailings can settle on soil surfaces near or some distance from mineral processing facilities although typically contamination of soils decreases with distance from the contaminant source. Real World Example: The Omaha Lead site in the City of Omaha, Nebraska, includes surface soils present at residential lots, child care facilities, schools, and other residential-type properties that have been contaminated as a result of air emissions from the ASARCO (originally American Smelting and Refining Company, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Grupo Mexico) lead smelting operations. This facility reported releasing approximately 404 tons of toxic air emissions from 1987 to 1997, including antimony, arsenic, chlorine, copper, lead, silver, and zinc compounds. The total area of the Omaha Lead site is approximately 8,840 acres or nearly 14 square miles. The site is on EPA’s National Priorities List because of lead contamination in soil at properties within a three-mile radius of the center of the site housing 65,615 residents; 240 child care facilities; fifteen elementary schools, one middle school, two high schools, and two special study centers with a total enrollment of 11,725 students; and other residential-type properties.

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[1] Much of the information in this definition was adapted from: Committee on Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands, Committee on Earth Resources, Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources; National Research Council, Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands: National Academy Press, Washington, DC: http://books.nap.edu/html/hardrock_fed_lands/index.html as well as from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development materials (Environmental Handbook — Documentation on Monitoring and Evaluating Environmental Impacts) on underground mining and its environmental effects posted on the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Sciences web site: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/energy/HC270799/HDL/ENV/enven/vol214.htm#37. percent20Underground percent20mining

[2] For a book full of ugly examples of how mining can kill a mountain ecosystem and the surrounding valleys, see: Erik Reece, Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness. New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin Group, 2006.