Environmental Issue Raised By The Mining Industry

When asked to think of coal mining, what comes to mind? A mountain with a hole cut into the side of it with a set of railroad tracks disappearing into it? Maybe an old mine car or two full of some rocks or coal, with a pickaxe and shovel leaning against it. A few guys with hard hats covered in a black powder coming walking out of the mine pushing a car or two full of coal. The technology has advanced but the process is basically still the same as well as the outcome. Coal is retrieved from underground and taken to factories to be burnt to create electricity or to fuel the steel mills.

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

The Mining Act does a very good job at protecting certain aspects of the environment such as ensuring that over exploitation of minerals does not occur, or making it mandatory to have a plan in place for closing the mine as well as assuring that there is money to do so. Although there are many things that this Act does right, there are also areas in which there are issues and should be improved. One of the first issues pertaining to this Act is the impact that it fails to mitigate regarding water quality. In areas where mining development occurs, the water quality is drastically affected and a study found that “water from waste rock piles has an ionic profile distinct from unimpacted catchments” (Carey, Wellen, & Shatilla, 2015), meaning that in order to mitigate the impact of the runoff measures must be put in place to limit it. Secondly, the Act does not involve

Midwest Copper Mining’s (MCM) biggest problem they are facing is that of sustaining supportable profit growth, as the undercurrents of the copper mining industry are changing. In particular, they need to figure out how they are going to increase their capacity to meet demands globally. They also need to figure out how to do this without disrupting the current culture of the business. They have been very successful and have created process and procedures that have kept them sustainable over the years. With the changing of the copper industry, MCM needs to re-evaluate their business strategy, make changes as necessary, in order to continue to be a successful company that is both a cost-leader and a differentiator.

Strip mining is terrible for the earth.” In the US, from 1930 to 2000, coal mining altered about 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of natural landscape, most originally forest.”

Canada is home to some of the largest mining corporations in the world. In fact, seventy-five percent of the world’s mining companies are based in Canada (Dean, 2013). These companies are involved in the extraction of numerous resources, including silver, petroleum, bitumen and coal. Canadian mining operations also have a particular focus in gold, as twenty-one of the country’s top forty mining companies are involved in gold extraction. With billion dollar annual revenues and interests in almost every continent, these multinational companies are making a large impact around the globe (Canadian Mining Journal, 2014). However, these impacts are not necessarily positive. Canadian mining corporations have failed to implement CSR policies and

The environmental effects of gold mining are that cyanide is extremely toxic to birds and mammals drawn to these ponds in search of water. The ponds can also leak or overflow, posing threats to underground drinking water supplies and fish and other forms of life nearby lakes and streams. Snow and heavy rains washed out an earthen dam on one end of a cyanide leach pond at a gold mine in Romania. Several hundred thousand people living along these rivers were told not to fish or to drink or withdraw water from affected rivers or from wells along the

The damage likely to occur will depend on what type of mining procedure is used, what substance is being mined and the environmental sustainability procedures in place. For the purpose of this part of the essay I will focus on the negative environmental effects of BHP’s OK Tedi copper mine in PNG. The Ok Tedi mine resulted in 900 million tons of toxic waste in the form of tailings to be dumped into the river over a decade. As a result the mine had acute and chronic long lasting effects on the geography, water, vegetation, biological life, farmable areas and village people’s way of life near the Ok Tedi

Method: Before companies being a mining project, they must first have suitable and registered plans for the rehabilitation of the mine site once mining is completed. They are required to (within NWS) produce an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which collects and surveys the features and conditions of the proposed mine site prior to commencement of mining. The EIS is used to predict the future impact of the mining operation and rehabilitation on native flora and fauna, so appropriate

Mining is a relatively temporary activity due to the limited operating lives of the mining sites, which are determined by the size and quality of the ore deposit being mined.

Introduction: There is a lot of physical strengths involved in mining. However, before people mine any landscape, they need people like: geologists, mathematicians, biologists, engineers, economists, geographers, and other experts from narrower areas (mineralogists, geophysicists& petrologists) to plan & acknowledge all of the outcomes of their decisions (how mining is going to affect environment: flora & fauna, locals or people living around that area and the land itself).

In our days, mining for resources is inevitable. The resources we need are valuable in everyday life. Such resources mined up are coal, copper, gold, silver, and sand. However, mining poses environmental risks that can degrade the quality of soil and water, which can end up effecting us humans if not taken care of and many of the damages are irreversible once they have occurred.

The most serious issue that leads to environmental destruction is weak policy on mining and water management policies. In the absence of proactive measurements from all stakeholders, fresh water resources, such as numerous lakes, rivers, and streams have dried up, resulting in severe water scarcity and quality crisis. Because Mongolian mining sector is considered to be the most harmful donor to environmental destruction unless it is correctly managed and controlled.

The emergence of the term SLO can be traced back to the mining sector in the 1990’s and arose primarily as a result of the public concerns about the negative social and environmental impacts of mining projects (Boutilier, 2014). Boutilier (2014) attributed the coining of the term to James Cooney, Vice President of the now defunct Vancouver-based gold mining company Placer Dome Inc. (p. 263). According to Boutilier, Cooney is said to have used the term to refer to the risks associated with community resistance to mining projects (p. 263). Other contributing factors to the development of the SLO approach include: the emerging corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability paradigms (Hall & Jeanneret, 2015, p. 214); a shift in governance towards a civil society perspective; growing public desire to be more involved in the decision-making process and get their “fair share” of benefits and adequate assurance that operations will be managed safely and responsibly (Prno & Slocombe 2014 p. 672). According to the literature, these shifts are reframing the dynamics between corporations and its stakeholders at the local, national and global level, particularly in the extractive sectors.

Metals have been an important industry for mankind since the Bronze Age, gold and silver are other important metals that were used for currency and ornamental jewelry. The Industrial Revolution helped to usher in modern civilization by transforming iron into railway transportation and high rise buildings in all of the major cities around the world. Concerns for the environment did not exist as long as the metals could be extracted to fulfill the needs of the masses. Environmental concerns about mining didn’t even come about in the United States until the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976 (EPA 1976).