Oakview2
Silver Member
Reposted from Elder Miner
[h=3]WHAT MINING MEANS TO AMERICA[/h]31 July 2013 - 07:52 AM
Every newborn infant in AMERICA will need a lifetime supply of:
750 pounds of zinc
800 pounds of lead
1,500 pounds of copper
3,593 pounds of aluminum
32,700 pounds of iron
26,550 pounds of clays
28,213 pounds of salt
and 1,238,101 pounds of stone, sand, gravel and cement.
FROM WHERE SHALL IT COME?
SUPPORT THE AMERICAN MINING INDUSTRY
SUPPORT MINING DOMESTIC MINERALS IN AMERICA
The Mining Laws beginning in America since 1866.
Culminating in the Mining Law of 1872, which is 30 USC, 22 et seq, still fully functional today. Has, as a free enterprise system, provided this great nation with all its mineral necessities. Which effectively provided America with every mineral needed.
To build this GREAT NATION, into a world power, as it exists today.
Mining in America, is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the Nation.
Every aspect is covered by multiple laws & regulation.
To INSURE effective protection of our environment.
The mining law of 1872, contains no environmental protection.
As, in 1872, that was given little thought.
Since 1872, approximately 2, 128 laws, and millions of regulation have been passed in America. That do INSURE environmental protection nation wide.
IN FACT, American mining law today, as supplemented by all other environmental laws.
Is the most environmentally conscious in the world.
Complete with strict enforcement mechanisms, to insure that.
Sadly, today many politicians, for no good or logical reason.
Want to repeal this Nations great mining law system.
To replace it with some other untested system, including high royalties on all minerals produced.
Such a change, would radically destabilize the mineral security of this nation.
Adding significant costs, tax & royalties to everything American consumers use.
It would also drive the American mining industry, to move off shore.
Further destabilizing the American economy.
Now, in these trying economic times.
We need to maintain & support the American mining industry, more, rather than less.
We need to insure our own economic future, from domestic mineral deposits.
Rather than purchase them, from foreign sources.
We need jobs in America, now more than ever.
So that American workers can provide for themselves.
It is ANTI- AMERICAN, to send those jobs off shore.
It is ANTI-AMERICAN to destabilize the very industry that provides our economic security.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, KEEP IT STRONG, INDEPENDENT & SECURE.
OTHERWISE THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE & DREAM WILL FADE INTO OBSCURITY.
WHAT MINING MEANS TO AMERICANS
THE CORNERSTONE OF THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
Most people pass their days with no thought of the role mining plays in their lives. They know where to buy the things they want but seldom consider the origins. Food comes from a grocery...electricity from a wall socket...tools from a hardware store...cars from a dealer...appliances from a department store...and so on. If we do think of how these things are created, many of us probably begin with farms, factories and power stations. In fact, they all begin with mining.
Without minerals and coal, we could not till our soil, build our machines, supply our energy, transport our goods or maintain any society beyond the most primitive. Our horn of plenty starts with a hole in the ground.
But extracting minerals and coal from the earth is only part of a miner's job. Protection of the environment--the air, land and water--is a necessary part of every mining operation. Miners respect the earth from which they take the minerals necessary for everyone's lives. Mining: The Bedrock of Everyday Life Most Americans have probably never seen a mine, except perhaps for a rock quarry or a gravel pit, yet mining touches everyone's life. Consider, for example, how very different modern society would be without the automobile, telephone, computer and television...or the fuel and electricity to make them work, more than half of which is generated from coal mined in the United States. Few people realize that an automobile contains about 15 different mineral materials, a color TV set about 35 and a telephone about 40.
Consider too...
Agriculture
Farm implements and fuel, fertilizers and irrigation systems, transportation of produce from fields to markets--all require minerals.
Construction
Minerals are literally society's building blocks. Concrete for foundations and nails for shingles, plumbing and wiring, ducts and insulation, cranes and bulldozers--all require minerals. Skyscrapers, hospitals, bridges, factories, fast food restaurants--rocks and minerals are needed everywhere.
Transportation
Trucks and trains, cars and planes, subways and ships, bicycles and space shuttles--all require minerals. Iron is needed for train and subway rails; gravel, crushed stone, tar, asphalt, road salt and cement are needed to build our roads and keep them usable and safe throughout the year.
Communications
Telephone and television, faxes and computer modems, relay satellites and radio stations, paper mills and printing presses--all require minerals.
Homes & Offices
Kitchen appliances and computers, toys and typewriters, stereos and photocopiers--all require minerals.
National Defense
Missiles and machine guns, helmets and submarines, tanks and field hospitals--all require minerals.
Environmental Protection
Platinum is used for catalytic converters in cars to keep our air clean; limestone helps neutralize acid in our lakes and streams; zeolites stabilize our soils and filter the air--minerals are needed to protect our environment.
Energy
Coal, oil and uranium fuel our cars, light our homes and provide heat and air conditioning for our comfort. Beyond that, drilling oil wells and digging coal, manufacturing turbines and stringing transmission wires, collecting solar heat and cutting firewood with a saw--all require minerals.
In fact, nearly 60 percent of our electricity is generated from coal that has been mined in the United States, shipped to utility plants on a transportation system that depends upon minerals, and then distributed to our homes, schools and businesses using copper wire and steel or aluminum transmission line supports.
Keystones of Destiny
Throughout history, civilizations have been shaped by their use of minerals. Mineral supplies have determined the rise and fall of empires, the patterns of populations and advances in industry and the arts.
The Stone Age saw man create crude weapons that gave him prowess as a hunter, primitive implements that enabled the beginnings of agriculture, flints that struck fire when needed and tools that provided the means to imprint images upon the walls of caves.
Although gold and silver had been hammered into decorative forms for ages before, the science of metallurgy was discovered when man learned to melt copper about 3500 BC Along the Nile and in the Fertile Crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, he turned this new ability to the making of weapons, ornaments and utensils for advancing civilizations. Much later he discovered that adding tin to copper resulted in a harder alloy; thus the Bronze Age was born. Then, when the Hittites came upon the secret of working another metal, the Iron Age began. Their armaments of iron made them supreme in Western Asia until others mastered their secret.
Much later, adventurers from Spain followed in the wake of Columbus to exploit the New World for riches. But it was the permanent settlers in America and elsewhere who found vastly greater wealth. They found it in coal, iron ore and other humble minerals that made possible the Industrial Revolution and its bountiful capacity for generating prosperity from the goodness of the ground. New inventions and new mineral discoveries helped the United States become a world power.
Today we live in the Age of Technology. Preoccupation with the wonders of science tends to obscure the role of minerals, but they are just as necessary for the spaceships of the future as for the steam engines of the past. Minerals remain our keystones of destiny.
Heritage of Wealth
National self-interest and common sense suggest that the United States should act vigorously to explore and develop its domestic minerals potential. In many ways, this is now a more formidable undertaking than at any time in the past, because this country has "skimmed off the cream" of much of its natural wealth.
It's worth remembering that the year 1776 not only witnessed the birth of the nation but also the invention of the steam engine, which made possible the Industrial Revolution. The nation and its industry developed hand in hand, and rapid progress was based largely on the ready availability of minerals in great abundance.
Inventions like the cotton gin, the reaper and the steam locomotive created a huge demand for iron. Discovery of a "mountain of solid iron ore 150 feet high" near Lake Superior in 1844 was only the first of many that made this region, known as the Mesabi Range, the most productive source of iron the world has ever known.
The coming of the telegraph, telephone and electric lights spurred an enormous demand for copper, and fabulous deposits were to be found in Michigan, Montana, Utah and Arizona.
Rich deposits of lead and zinc were developed along the Mississippi.
Here as elsewhere, the miners were followed by construction crews, road builders, merchants and farmers. It was miners, not gunslingers, who truly formed the vanguard for settling the nation.
Gold and silver in the West transformed some ragged prospectors into instant millionaires and provided great wealth for investment in the growing industries of the country.
Although the individual prospector still has a highly useful role to play, the day when a miner with a burro and a pick is likely to discover a fabulous lode of ore is long gone. Today it is necessary to explore more widely and deeply than ever before and often for more disappointing results.
Having to dig deeper for lower grade ores requires a tremendous outlay of capital. Where once a miner was equipped with little more than a shovel and a cart, today advanced machinery, high technology and stricter environmental and safety standards require the mining industry to invest billions of dollars each year to extract the minerals needed to run the country.
Expanding Demand
Because minerals and fossil fuels are so important in our everyday life, demand for them has grown as our society has become more complex. U.S. demands for minerals not only have grown in diversity, but also have grown in quantity. Today the Unites States with less than 5 percent of the world's population and 7 percent of its land area, consumes about a quarter of the entire globe's minerals production. As population increases, technology advances and the standard of living continues to climb, demand for the earth's resources also will grow.
Indeed, it is now necessary to produce 40,000 pounds of new minerals each year for each American and to produce 1 billion tons of coal each year for electric power and other uses.
Minerals Working for America
In the face of our mounting demand for minerals of every kind, America is becoming more and more dependent upon foreign sources of supply. Today we must import these percentages of our annual needs: 18 percent of iron ore, 84 percent tin, 94 percent tungsten, 70 percent zinc, 66 percent nickel, 75 percent chromium and virtually all our manganese, aluminum ore (bauxite), graphite, cobalt and columbium, which is used in steel making and super alloys. Some of these vital materials come mainly from countries of social, political and economic instability. The United States is vulnerable to foreign events over which it has little influence.
On the other hand, there are some bright spots where the United States has become less dependent on foreign sources and has reduced its trade deficit because mining companies have risked capital and manpower to start new mines and expand old ones.
In 1987 the first platinum mine outside of South Africa and the former Soviet Union was opened in Montana. The Stillwater mine now provides some of this strategic mineral that formerly had to be imported from politically unstable countries. Platinum, the world's most precious metal, is important not only for its use in electronics, but also for its use in catalytic converters, one of the most important environmental protection advances.
Gold, too, is being mined at a greater rate in the United States, particularly since technological advances have allowed lower grades of ore to be mined economically. As late as 1980, the United States imported 82 percent of the gold used by domestic manufacturers. Thanks to increased output, this demand now is being filled by U.S. gold production, and in 1994, $1.4 billion worth of gold was exported. Altogether, that represents greater than a $10 billion turnaround in our balance of trade.
Minerals for Our Future
In order to assure continued sources of minerals, Americans must be allowed to explore for elusive mineral deposits. Mining has been called the art of looking for a needle in Nature's haystack. One must dig for minerals where they are, not where one might wish they were.
Much untapped potential lies beneath public lands, primarily in the West. Yet governmental policies have been closing more and more of these lands to mineral exploration and development.
Almost three-fourths of our vast public lands had been declared "off limits" to mining, an area equal in size to nearly all the states east of the Mississippi. These public lands, mainly in the western United States, particularly Alaska, hold the greatest chance of future discoveries that will maintain the U.S. mineral resource base. Mining could be allowed on public lands and still leave the overwhelming share of them free for wildlife, scenic beauty, recreational opportunities and preservation of wilderness. Otherwise, the country runs the risk of having its minerals supplies shut off abroad and locked up at home.
The General Mining Law provides for the right of prospectors and geologists to enter the nonrestricted public lands to look for minerals. If they discover a deposit, the law also allows them to extract the minerals. Other laws guarantee that the miners will protect the environment and the public safety.
Preserving the Environment
Public concern about the quality of the environment has intensified in recent years and has brought some beneficial reforms. Today, for example, detailed reclamation plans must be approved by government officials and local permitting groups even before mining begins.
Mining operations, including smelting and refining, can be pursued while meeting necessary standards for the protection of human health. Still, some temporary environmental disturbance is inevitable if there is to be minerals production.
Another question of public concern is the effect of surface mining on the land. Today surface mining is practiced in all 50 states and provides over 60 percent of the coal we use and more than 95 percent of the domestic output of phosphate rock, clays, copper, uranium, iron, crushed stone and gravel. Yet, there is another astounding fact: Despite extensive exploration, during the entire history in U.S. well over 99 percent of the land surface never has been touched by mining.
In earlier times, technologies were primitive and, unfortunately, so were the attitudes of some operators, who left the landscape scarred. Today, such irresponsible approaches are prohibited by law. Through extensive environmental planning, for instance, coal producers now return all mined land to the same or better condition than existed before the mining took place. Other mineral producers also spend millions of dollars reclaiming mine sites.
Underground mining does not disturb the land in the same way as surface mining, but the mining companies take great care to protect the water and wildlife surrounding their operations, too.
Industry also is cleaning up the air by reducing sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-burning utility plants by nearly 30 percent since 1973, even though coal use has increased by about 85 percent.
New improvements are being made with the use of clean coal technologies, which have been developed and tested in laboratories and plants around the country and are now ready for commercial use. America has enough coal to provide its energy for centuries to come, and these new processes to remove coal's impurities will help protect the environment for future generations.
Recycling of Materials
While exploration and development of new resources are clearly necessary and ought to be accelerated, there is another way to increase the availability of the minerals the country needs. They can be recycled for renewed use. Recycling has been practiced for many years, particularly in the case of such precious metals as gold and silver. But scrap iron, copper from automobile wiring and radiators, lead from batteries, and other metals also are recycled.
Sixty-eight percent of all steel produced eventually is recycled to be used again. For instance, an old car is crushed, shredded and fed into a state-of-the-art electric steelmaking furnace and may be used again in a shiny new car. Energy is saved, too--each year, steel recycling saves the energy equivalent to meet the electrical power needs of Los Angeles for more than eight years.
Recycling of aluminum, especially aluminum cans, has risen dramatically as Americans learn that reuse helps conserve our resources. More than 65 percent of the aluminum beverage cans sold in the United States now are being collected and returned for recycling.
Recycling conserves our resources and the energy it takes to convert them into usable form. Although recycling is only a partial answer to our total mineral needs, new technologies are promoting increased recycling and will continue to do so as our natural resources become scarcer.
What Mining Means to Americans
In sum, mining can be conducted with careful regard for our health, respect for ecological needs, and the determination to help fulfill the material aspirations of all peoples. What mining means to Americans is coal-fired electricity, cars to drive, televisions to watch, tractors and fertilizers to grow our food, buildings in which to work, homes where we live, computers to relay our thoughts...all those things that make a civilized world. Mining touches every part of our lives.
[h=3]WHAT MINING MEANS TO AMERICA[/h]31 July 2013 - 07:52 AM
Every newborn infant in AMERICA will need a lifetime supply of:
750 pounds of zinc
800 pounds of lead
1,500 pounds of copper
3,593 pounds of aluminum
32,700 pounds of iron
26,550 pounds of clays
28,213 pounds of salt
and 1,238,101 pounds of stone, sand, gravel and cement.
FROM WHERE SHALL IT COME?
SUPPORT THE AMERICAN MINING INDUSTRY
SUPPORT MINING DOMESTIC MINERALS IN AMERICA
The Mining Laws beginning in America since 1866.
Culminating in the Mining Law of 1872, which is 30 USC, 22 et seq, still fully functional today. Has, as a free enterprise system, provided this great nation with all its mineral necessities. Which effectively provided America with every mineral needed.
To build this GREAT NATION, into a world power, as it exists today.
Mining in America, is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the Nation.
Every aspect is covered by multiple laws & regulation.
To INSURE effective protection of our environment.
The mining law of 1872, contains no environmental protection.
As, in 1872, that was given little thought.
Since 1872, approximately 2, 128 laws, and millions of regulation have been passed in America. That do INSURE environmental protection nation wide.
IN FACT, American mining law today, as supplemented by all other environmental laws.
Is the most environmentally conscious in the world.
Complete with strict enforcement mechanisms, to insure that.
Sadly, today many politicians, for no good or logical reason.
Want to repeal this Nations great mining law system.
To replace it with some other untested system, including high royalties on all minerals produced.
Such a change, would radically destabilize the mineral security of this nation.
Adding significant costs, tax & royalties to everything American consumers use.
It would also drive the American mining industry, to move off shore.
Further destabilizing the American economy.
Now, in these trying economic times.
We need to maintain & support the American mining industry, more, rather than less.
We need to insure our own economic future, from domestic mineral deposits.
Rather than purchase them, from foreign sources.
We need jobs in America, now more than ever.
So that American workers can provide for themselves.
It is ANTI- AMERICAN, to send those jobs off shore.
It is ANTI-AMERICAN to destabilize the very industry that provides our economic security.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, KEEP IT STRONG, INDEPENDENT & SECURE.
OTHERWISE THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE & DREAM WILL FADE INTO OBSCURITY.
WHAT MINING MEANS TO AMERICANS
THE CORNERSTONE OF THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
Most people pass their days with no thought of the role mining plays in their lives. They know where to buy the things they want but seldom consider the origins. Food comes from a grocery...electricity from a wall socket...tools from a hardware store...cars from a dealer...appliances from a department store...and so on. If we do think of how these things are created, many of us probably begin with farms, factories and power stations. In fact, they all begin with mining.
Without minerals and coal, we could not till our soil, build our machines, supply our energy, transport our goods or maintain any society beyond the most primitive. Our horn of plenty starts with a hole in the ground.
But extracting minerals and coal from the earth is only part of a miner's job. Protection of the environment--the air, land and water--is a necessary part of every mining operation. Miners respect the earth from which they take the minerals necessary for everyone's lives. Mining: The Bedrock of Everyday Life Most Americans have probably never seen a mine, except perhaps for a rock quarry or a gravel pit, yet mining touches everyone's life. Consider, for example, how very different modern society would be without the automobile, telephone, computer and television...or the fuel and electricity to make them work, more than half of which is generated from coal mined in the United States. Few people realize that an automobile contains about 15 different mineral materials, a color TV set about 35 and a telephone about 40.
Consider too...
Agriculture
Farm implements and fuel, fertilizers and irrigation systems, transportation of produce from fields to markets--all require minerals.
Construction
Minerals are literally society's building blocks. Concrete for foundations and nails for shingles, plumbing and wiring, ducts and insulation, cranes and bulldozers--all require minerals. Skyscrapers, hospitals, bridges, factories, fast food restaurants--rocks and minerals are needed everywhere.
Transportation
Trucks and trains, cars and planes, subways and ships, bicycles and space shuttles--all require minerals. Iron is needed for train and subway rails; gravel, crushed stone, tar, asphalt, road salt and cement are needed to build our roads and keep them usable and safe throughout the year.
Communications
Telephone and television, faxes and computer modems, relay satellites and radio stations, paper mills and printing presses--all require minerals.
Homes & Offices
Kitchen appliances and computers, toys and typewriters, stereos and photocopiers--all require minerals.
National Defense
Missiles and machine guns, helmets and submarines, tanks and field hospitals--all require minerals.
Environmental Protection
Platinum is used for catalytic converters in cars to keep our air clean; limestone helps neutralize acid in our lakes and streams; zeolites stabilize our soils and filter the air--minerals are needed to protect our environment.
Energy
Coal, oil and uranium fuel our cars, light our homes and provide heat and air conditioning for our comfort. Beyond that, drilling oil wells and digging coal, manufacturing turbines and stringing transmission wires, collecting solar heat and cutting firewood with a saw--all require minerals.
In fact, nearly 60 percent of our electricity is generated from coal that has been mined in the United States, shipped to utility plants on a transportation system that depends upon minerals, and then distributed to our homes, schools and businesses using copper wire and steel or aluminum transmission line supports.
Keystones of Destiny
Throughout history, civilizations have been shaped by their use of minerals. Mineral supplies have determined the rise and fall of empires, the patterns of populations and advances in industry and the arts.
The Stone Age saw man create crude weapons that gave him prowess as a hunter, primitive implements that enabled the beginnings of agriculture, flints that struck fire when needed and tools that provided the means to imprint images upon the walls of caves.
Although gold and silver had been hammered into decorative forms for ages before, the science of metallurgy was discovered when man learned to melt copper about 3500 BC Along the Nile and in the Fertile Crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, he turned this new ability to the making of weapons, ornaments and utensils for advancing civilizations. Much later he discovered that adding tin to copper resulted in a harder alloy; thus the Bronze Age was born. Then, when the Hittites came upon the secret of working another metal, the Iron Age began. Their armaments of iron made them supreme in Western Asia until others mastered their secret.
Much later, adventurers from Spain followed in the wake of Columbus to exploit the New World for riches. But it was the permanent settlers in America and elsewhere who found vastly greater wealth. They found it in coal, iron ore and other humble minerals that made possible the Industrial Revolution and its bountiful capacity for generating prosperity from the goodness of the ground. New inventions and new mineral discoveries helped the United States become a world power.
Today we live in the Age of Technology. Preoccupation with the wonders of science tends to obscure the role of minerals, but they are just as necessary for the spaceships of the future as for the steam engines of the past. Minerals remain our keystones of destiny.
Heritage of Wealth
National self-interest and common sense suggest that the United States should act vigorously to explore and develop its domestic minerals potential. In many ways, this is now a more formidable undertaking than at any time in the past, because this country has "skimmed off the cream" of much of its natural wealth.
It's worth remembering that the year 1776 not only witnessed the birth of the nation but also the invention of the steam engine, which made possible the Industrial Revolution. The nation and its industry developed hand in hand, and rapid progress was based largely on the ready availability of minerals in great abundance.
Inventions like the cotton gin, the reaper and the steam locomotive created a huge demand for iron. Discovery of a "mountain of solid iron ore 150 feet high" near Lake Superior in 1844 was only the first of many that made this region, known as the Mesabi Range, the most productive source of iron the world has ever known.
The coming of the telegraph, telephone and electric lights spurred an enormous demand for copper, and fabulous deposits were to be found in Michigan, Montana, Utah and Arizona.
Rich deposits of lead and zinc were developed along the Mississippi.
Here as elsewhere, the miners were followed by construction crews, road builders, merchants and farmers. It was miners, not gunslingers, who truly formed the vanguard for settling the nation.
Gold and silver in the West transformed some ragged prospectors into instant millionaires and provided great wealth for investment in the growing industries of the country.
Although the individual prospector still has a highly useful role to play, the day when a miner with a burro and a pick is likely to discover a fabulous lode of ore is long gone. Today it is necessary to explore more widely and deeply than ever before and often for more disappointing results.
Having to dig deeper for lower grade ores requires a tremendous outlay of capital. Where once a miner was equipped with little more than a shovel and a cart, today advanced machinery, high technology and stricter environmental and safety standards require the mining industry to invest billions of dollars each year to extract the minerals needed to run the country.
Expanding Demand
Because minerals and fossil fuels are so important in our everyday life, demand for them has grown as our society has become more complex. U.S. demands for minerals not only have grown in diversity, but also have grown in quantity. Today the Unites States with less than 5 percent of the world's population and 7 percent of its land area, consumes about a quarter of the entire globe's minerals production. As population increases, technology advances and the standard of living continues to climb, demand for the earth's resources also will grow.
Indeed, it is now necessary to produce 40,000 pounds of new minerals each year for each American and to produce 1 billion tons of coal each year for electric power and other uses.
Minerals Working for America
In the face of our mounting demand for minerals of every kind, America is becoming more and more dependent upon foreign sources of supply. Today we must import these percentages of our annual needs: 18 percent of iron ore, 84 percent tin, 94 percent tungsten, 70 percent zinc, 66 percent nickel, 75 percent chromium and virtually all our manganese, aluminum ore (bauxite), graphite, cobalt and columbium, which is used in steel making and super alloys. Some of these vital materials come mainly from countries of social, political and economic instability. The United States is vulnerable to foreign events over which it has little influence.
On the other hand, there are some bright spots where the United States has become less dependent on foreign sources and has reduced its trade deficit because mining companies have risked capital and manpower to start new mines and expand old ones.
In 1987 the first platinum mine outside of South Africa and the former Soviet Union was opened in Montana. The Stillwater mine now provides some of this strategic mineral that formerly had to be imported from politically unstable countries. Platinum, the world's most precious metal, is important not only for its use in electronics, but also for its use in catalytic converters, one of the most important environmental protection advances.
Gold, too, is being mined at a greater rate in the United States, particularly since technological advances have allowed lower grades of ore to be mined economically. As late as 1980, the United States imported 82 percent of the gold used by domestic manufacturers. Thanks to increased output, this demand now is being filled by U.S. gold production, and in 1994, $1.4 billion worth of gold was exported. Altogether, that represents greater than a $10 billion turnaround in our balance of trade.
Minerals for Our Future
In order to assure continued sources of minerals, Americans must be allowed to explore for elusive mineral deposits. Mining has been called the art of looking for a needle in Nature's haystack. One must dig for minerals where they are, not where one might wish they were.
Much untapped potential lies beneath public lands, primarily in the West. Yet governmental policies have been closing more and more of these lands to mineral exploration and development.
Almost three-fourths of our vast public lands had been declared "off limits" to mining, an area equal in size to nearly all the states east of the Mississippi. These public lands, mainly in the western United States, particularly Alaska, hold the greatest chance of future discoveries that will maintain the U.S. mineral resource base. Mining could be allowed on public lands and still leave the overwhelming share of them free for wildlife, scenic beauty, recreational opportunities and preservation of wilderness. Otherwise, the country runs the risk of having its minerals supplies shut off abroad and locked up at home.
The General Mining Law provides for the right of prospectors and geologists to enter the nonrestricted public lands to look for minerals. If they discover a deposit, the law also allows them to extract the minerals. Other laws guarantee that the miners will protect the environment and the public safety.
Preserving the Environment
Public concern about the quality of the environment has intensified in recent years and has brought some beneficial reforms. Today, for example, detailed reclamation plans must be approved by government officials and local permitting groups even before mining begins.
Mining operations, including smelting and refining, can be pursued while meeting necessary standards for the protection of human health. Still, some temporary environmental disturbance is inevitable if there is to be minerals production.
Another question of public concern is the effect of surface mining on the land. Today surface mining is practiced in all 50 states and provides over 60 percent of the coal we use and more than 95 percent of the domestic output of phosphate rock, clays, copper, uranium, iron, crushed stone and gravel. Yet, there is another astounding fact: Despite extensive exploration, during the entire history in U.S. well over 99 percent of the land surface never has been touched by mining.
In earlier times, technologies were primitive and, unfortunately, so were the attitudes of some operators, who left the landscape scarred. Today, such irresponsible approaches are prohibited by law. Through extensive environmental planning, for instance, coal producers now return all mined land to the same or better condition than existed before the mining took place. Other mineral producers also spend millions of dollars reclaiming mine sites.
Underground mining does not disturb the land in the same way as surface mining, but the mining companies take great care to protect the water and wildlife surrounding their operations, too.
Industry also is cleaning up the air by reducing sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-burning utility plants by nearly 30 percent since 1973, even though coal use has increased by about 85 percent.
New improvements are being made with the use of clean coal technologies, which have been developed and tested in laboratories and plants around the country and are now ready for commercial use. America has enough coal to provide its energy for centuries to come, and these new processes to remove coal's impurities will help protect the environment for future generations.
Recycling of Materials
While exploration and development of new resources are clearly necessary and ought to be accelerated, there is another way to increase the availability of the minerals the country needs. They can be recycled for renewed use. Recycling has been practiced for many years, particularly in the case of such precious metals as gold and silver. But scrap iron, copper from automobile wiring and radiators, lead from batteries, and other metals also are recycled.
Sixty-eight percent of all steel produced eventually is recycled to be used again. For instance, an old car is crushed, shredded and fed into a state-of-the-art electric steelmaking furnace and may be used again in a shiny new car. Energy is saved, too--each year, steel recycling saves the energy equivalent to meet the electrical power needs of Los Angeles for more than eight years.
Recycling of aluminum, especially aluminum cans, has risen dramatically as Americans learn that reuse helps conserve our resources. More than 65 percent of the aluminum beverage cans sold in the United States now are being collected and returned for recycling.
Recycling conserves our resources and the energy it takes to convert them into usable form. Although recycling is only a partial answer to our total mineral needs, new technologies are promoting increased recycling and will continue to do so as our natural resources become scarcer.
What Mining Means to Americans
In sum, mining can be conducted with careful regard for our health, respect for ecological needs, and the determination to help fulfill the material aspirations of all peoples. What mining means to Americans is coal-fired electricity, cars to drive, televisions to watch, tractors and fertilizers to grow our food, buildings in which to work, homes where we live, computers to relay our thoughts...all those things that make a civilized world. Mining touches every part of our lives.
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