California Gold And The Environmental Impacts Of Mining

When people hear the term gold rush it is automatically associated with California. The first, gold rush was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. This was a tremendous impact due to people rushing to the Carolina’s mountains. People flocked from all neighboring states to strike rich. The second, was in Georgia a three ounce nugget was found. Miners began to search in every cave for gold. The third, gold rush was in California. Flakes of gold were found in the Sacramento Valley. The population expanded to 100,000. Locals benefited from the mast flock of miners. People have always been fascinated with gold and people are still searching for gold.

The Grand Coulee Dam, located in Eastern Washington, was one of controversy, risk, and a point of no return. While the water captured made the desert area blossom in agriculture and it powered some large cities, it created a sense of accomplishment, that humans can control Mother Nature. While many people were very excited for this new construction – which gives power and resources - at the time, some thought it should not be allowed, they are not proud of containing the Columbia River. In this analysis, I am going to focus on the economic and social effects that the Grand Coulee Dam created in its build.

Thesis: Today I will discuss a very important issue that is happening in our own backyard. Hydraulic Fracturing, also known as “Fracking”, is contaminating our drinking water, all in the name of “Energy Reform”.

With so many people mining for gold and trying to find as much as they can, new technology was invented to make the process easier and more efficient. Before this new gold-mining technology, many miners would dam up rivers to make their findings easier and supply water during dry months, or the rivers would become blocked with deposits and sediments, effectively changing the rivers for animals and plants. Along with that, the need for wood and lumber increased so the forest changed with more and more trees cut down to create canals. The land was essentially torn up just in the miner quest for gold. With the invention of hydraulic mining came one of the most disastrous effects on the state’s physical environment. Before workers would only dam up rivers, but with this machine, mountainsides and other areas were torn up,

Minerals can affect society in many ways for example; Surface mining destroys vegetation across large areas, increasing erosion. Open-pit mining uses huge quantities of water. Acid mine drainage is pollution caused when dissolved toxic materials wash from mines into nearby lakes and streams. Minerals is approximately 80 percent of mined ore consists of impurities that become wastes after processing. These wastes, called tailings, are usually left in giant piles on the ground or in ponds near the processing plants (Figure 12.9). The tailings contain toxic materials such as cyanide, mercury, and sulfuric acid. Left

One consequence on the environment would have been from the pollutants the mine would have given off. One of these pollutants would be Mercury. In the process of getting iron ore from taconite pellets, which is what is mined, the taconite must be heated up, one element that is given off during the heating process is Mercury (WI DNR, 2003, 22-25). When Mercury is in it’s gaseous form, it enters the water cycle and helps form acid rain (WI DNR, 2003). When the acid rain is released as precipitation, it enters the waterways and pollutes the waters. In the case of Northern Wisconsin, this acid rain would help pollute the Bad River Watershed, one of the biggest tributaries of Lake Superior, which would be polluted from the Mercury. Pollution of Lake Superior would be devastating. Lake Superior is the world’s largest freshwater lake and it’s water flows through the Great Lakes, down the St. Lawrence River, and into the Atlantic Ocean, all of which would be polluted. Also, Lake Superior is a huge source of drinking water for a huge portion of cities located right on the lake including Ashland and Superior in Wisconsin, Duluth and Cloquet in Minnesota, Sault St. Marie and Marquette in Minnesota, and Thunder Bay in Canada just to name a few (Lake by Lake, 2003). Another major pollutant is Sulfate. Sulfate is one of the major parts of taconite mine runoff. Sulfate does the same as Mercury except it is mixed in the water right away instead of being in acid rain, though it is a component to acid rain (WI DNR, 2013, iv). Sulfate directly ran off into watersheds creates more problems than if it were just in acid rain. In the Bad River Watershed, wild rice is a prominent crop grown in the water for the Ojibwe. That runoff can form Sulfide, and it has been shown in Minnesota to be toxic to wild rice, helping destroy a means of income for so many people (“Wild Rice Sulfate, 2014, 5-6).

The California Gold Rush of 1849 is one of the most interesting and exiting events of the United States. From the wild stories of men striking it big, to the heart wrenching tales of people losing everything, these are what make it so alluring. There are many aspects of the California Gold Rush; effects on California; individual stories of struggle; and effects on the United States as a young country looking for stability.

As the world responds to climate change, one of the greatest personal challenges is an intellectual one. Where ought one to direct the limited amount of time and energy one has to most effectively engage the challenge of climate change? This question begins with how one gathers and processes information. There are so many particulars to understand and so many locations that demand attention. Where should one begin?

Yet, according to Environmental Heath Perspectives author David Holzman (2011), “In a study of 68 private drinking water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York, methane contamination rose sharply with proximity to natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) sites” (p. 1). The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) suspects that the cause of this contamination is the result of leaks caused by poor gas well construction at the fracking sites. Not only is the water surrounding the hydraulic fracturing sites getting contaminated but it is also getting depleted at a fast rate. According to Scientific American journalist Bobby Magill (2015), “Oil and natural gas fracking, on average, uses more than 28 times the water it did 15 years ago, … putting farming and drinking sources at risk in arid states, especially during drought” (p. 1). One of these states is California which is undergoing one the worst droughts in its history. Despite this fact, California is still extracting natural gas using hydraulic fracturing. There are also other types of environmental problems that threaten America’s landscapes which are caused by hydraulic

“It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles.”

Placer mining uses water to separate mud and gravel from mineral of value. The disruption of ancient riverbeds is very harsh and environmentally destructive causing debris to be deposited into streams and making them uninhabitable for fish or other life forms for many miles downstream. This method is very similar to the Gold rush days in California in1849, that the practice was halted in 1884. The disruption of stream banks, high erosion, and harming ecological plant communities makes this one of the worst forms of

Over the course of the past century, much has changed in America. From the rise of factory production bringing people out of the countryside and into the cities, to two World Wars that continued the massive factory production that funded and armed the war effort, to the rise of suburbia and the massive developments that often destroyed or forever altered vast tracks of land where they would sit. In Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, he addresses the politics of water and environmentalism in the West. “Thanks to irrigation, thanks to the Bureau [of Reclamation]... states such as California, Arizona, and Idaho became populous and wealthy; millions settled in regions where nature, left alone, would have

The focus of chapter three was about the federal irrigation systems, which was caused by weather events. The year of 1880’s, South Dakota and nearby states survived a natural disaster. South Dakota was hit by a blizzard and in the result of that suffer from a drought right after. This is when people began to search for new homes and a place that had water and a fertile land. The drought affected most the farmers that lived in that area due to the inexperienced with irrigation. The drought helped irrigation companies start businesses to better the farming industry. Unfortunately, most of the businesses failed and shut down very quick. The state of California initialed an attempt to create a plan to conserve and ration out water. The outcome

Sex, Gender, Culture, and a Great Event: The California Gold Rush by Albert L. Hurtado is article that describes living conditions in California during the Gold Rush time period. In the beginning those who migrated to California were predominantly males. With every year that followed the Government kept track of the ratio of men to women. It was proven that to each woman there were 12 men, which did not match a supply to demand theory. Many of the men that came to California found work and became wealthy. Classification, race and gender were the major components of the way a person was treated. People were able to establish a way of life that corresponded to their previous lives which they once had in their hometowns but better because of the freedoms given.

With the public’s growing demand for clean energy and the need to replace the current energy sources that we consume on a daily basis use, more and more states are starting to use hydraulic fracturing, at an alarming rate, to excavate these resources from beneath the shale rocks. Many experts, along with the public, believe that hydraulic fracturing has numerous environmental and health to both human and wildlife communities. Also, many believe that hydraulic fracturing possibly have moral and ethical implications that need to be address and fixed. With hydraulic fracturing being a very controversial topic between scientist and the public, fracking will remain very controversial unless changes and regulations are made and enforced to protect humans, wildlife and the planet to ensure none are in danger and we are able to extract the resources we need. What are these implications that have the experts and public in a need of concern and uproar about fracking? Let us start with what kind of implications hydraulic fracking can have on the environment if we are not careful and observant of our planet.