The Contamination Of The Gold Mining Company

     Hazardous wastes are another problem for the water in our world. These wastes are toxic, reactive, corrosive or ignitable. Most problems come from humans not storing the substance properly or not disposing of it correctly. This can be easily proven in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River, in Cleveland, Ohio, caught on fire and burned for sometime. Since this happened environmentalists have taken extreme measures to reduce the amount of pollution that is coming out of the power plants that are on the river and on Lake Erie.

Plains Midstream company is the cause of this big oil spill in Red Deer River. The big cause of the oil spill was when a pipeline that was owned by Plains Midstream had been broken and was not functioning correctly as it was supposed to. The pipe is supposed to process the oil through it and around to make the oil. However, the pipe actually did not do this and the oil had gone around and it had been broken since there were old pipes and not new ones. Almost half a million of crude oil had been leaked into the creek of Red Deer River so the people had been very devastated about this occurring because instead of enjoying the view, all they see is a lot of oil that had polluted their water and there whole community with dirty water. The people

In order to have a thriving and healthy society a clean water supply is a very simple but necessary resource. Dating back to the beginning of civilizations the need for clean water was an essential need. The Clean Water Act dates to Franklin D Roosevelt’s administration. In 1972 Congress amended and passed what is now known as the Clean Water Act to protect our precious resource of water. The clean water Act prevented the dumping of pollutants into navigable waters without a permit. Many municipalities and commercial entities had previously dumped sewage and unregulated waste in to our rivers and streams contaminating a great percentage of our drinking water. This wreck less contamination of our waterways not only affected humans but also affected our wildlife including fish and animal’s life that depended on these waters. Any municipality or company that could affect our waters would need to apply for a permit to do so. While the Clean Water Act was a landmark legislation that was supported by both Democrats and Republicans alike over the years has seen expansion of the EPA’s interpretation of the law and has created a controversy in Administrative Law that has many challenges up to the Unites States Supreme Court. (Television, n.d.)

Moving on, there are some issues with the legislation that has been passed in order to conserve the water, especially concerning the Clean Water Act. People are having opposition with the rules of the Clean Water Act. Small business owners feel that this act is restricting the way that they tend to their property. For example, several farmers use pesticides, herbicides, and other fertilizers to keep harmful insects and other animals off of their crops, so they can grow properly. These pesticides eventually end up in our local rivers, lakes, and oceans which are making humans and animals very ill. However, they make money by the crops they sell, and to them, the Clean Water Act has a very negative economic impact on them (Landers). Although

The Buffalo Creek flood of West Virginia is believed to be the most devastating coal relate disaster in West Virginia history. The flood occurred in the Buffalo Creek area of Logan County on February 26, 1972 when three dams broke and released 132 million gallons of water and coal waste known by miners as “gob,” and is a thick sludge-like material. The gob contains many toxic chemicals and pollutants such as mercury and arsenic that are left behind from the coal mining process. The wastewater would lie in settling ponds and dams until it could be properly disposed of. The water that was left over from processing coal would be disposed of in two different ways. Some of the water would be pumped from the dam back to the “tipple”, otherwise

(Erikson p. 25) The Buffalo Coal Company decided to stack this waste at the top of the mountains which after a while created a dam. This "sludge water" was dumped in nearby lakes which they stopped because this water would end up in the streams that lead to the town. They then disposed of the water behind the dam which held up to over 130 million gallons of waste. There was a non-stop rain plaguing this area throughout the whole month of February. This rain continued to fill this dam, and on February 26, 1972 that dam collapsed causing this valley to fill with slag water. Residents explained hearing explosions and it feeling like an earthquake as the flood began. In only a few hours most of Buffalo Creek had been washed away into the Guyandotte River. After most of the water left the scene could be described as something out of a war movie; wreckage, bodies lying everywhere. The Buffalo Creek government creates aid for survivors of this disaster by offering trailer homes and other relief processes. The book has a lot of witness accounts what it was like actually going through this. I found out that The Environmental Protection Agency was enacted in 1970 and by this time the Buffalo Mining Company had already been dumping their sludge and waste water

the pipeline is close to a river. The river is the only source of water that the Standing Rock Sioux

Unfortunately the risk of Native American land being contaminated and their loss of control of their reservation has resumed. The Trump Administration and other executives have signed actions to resume the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Native americans have resumed the protesting of the pipeline and sadly there water sources are still at risk at being contaminated. Native american leaders are planning to resist these actions passed by the trump administration, specifically the one authorizing the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This project has been delayed since December and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers renounced the permit to lay the final piece of pipeline under Lake Oahe, which is the sacred water source to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The pipeline is very close to being completed and now the issue is that if the pipe is not fully finished it can break and really contaminate water sources. Kaufman and Miller state that, “The fossil fuel industry is a dead and dying economy. Green energy is the new great America. Trump and his Cabinet are trying to build an infrastructure for pipelines so our country will remain dependent on fossil fuels.” People are continuously attempting to prevent further environmental hazards from pipelines that leak into major rivers and endanger the drinking water of communities. Overall, the pipeline is going to be built and the fights against clean water, the fights against big oil and climate change, and the fight for land control in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is still

Recently, a contractor working for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unintentionally released 3 million gallons of toxic mine waste into the Animas River in the Mountain West state of Colorado. Right now, people in the US are debating the efficacy of the EPA (the right-wing is using the spill as anti-government propaganda) and the noxious aftermath the spill will undoubtedly have on local economies, communities and ecosystems.

It has came to mind that the Big Sioux River located in the Eastern Part of South Dakota is a very polluted river. It is so polluted that its the 13th highest polluted water source in the United States. Therefore the people around this river, this is a very important to the people around because this is there main water source. People may ask why is this river so polluted and its because of the toxic waste from us humans. Every time you go to the bathroom all this waste ends up going into the river and even when you take a shower all the chemicals that go in your hair or for your body from the soap end up going into the river.

Already at 95% completion, the pipeline is scheduled to cross the Missouri River a mere 10 miles upstream from Standing Rock Reservation. The most urgent of the threats this pipeline proposes is the threat of contamination of the Missouri River, a crucial water source to both the Dakotas, particularly the Sioux nation tribes, for whom this river is their only source of water for drinking, irrigation, and fish. The pipeline was originally routed to cross the Missouri River further north, 10 miles upstream from the State’s Capital, Bismarck. However, after a study was conducted about the potential impact of pipeline spills, given the proximity to wellheads serving as the City’s source of drinking water, the route was rejected and moved to Standing Rock. Oil spills are the greatest environmental concern when considering the pipeline’s potential harm. North Dakota has experienced 292 oil spills in the last two years alone, despite those companies who own the various pipelines ensuring that spills are a rarity, citing “safeguards” that prevent them. The reality is that oil spills are a frequent occurrence when transporting oil for thousands of miles, so the matter of oil spills is not a question of if, but rather when, and how many(Mckenna). Of all the nearly 300 spills that occurred in North Dakota

The amount of pollution that has spilled is three times more than was previously reported (Garrison, 2015). As of August 10th, the mine was still discharging 500 gallons a minute into the Animus River. The EPA administrator Shaun McGrath has stated that the EPA has contained the rest of the spill in two ponds near the spill site and they are treating it (Garrison, 2015). Another group of people affected by the spill is the Navajo Nation, and the Navajo Nation commission has declared a state of emergency. The Nation is 27,000 square miles and has been considered to be the size of some of the smaller states like West Virginia. Navajo Nation president Russel Begaye has asked an attorney to look into filing a lawsuit against the EPA (Garrison, 2015). Russel has also stated his dissatisfaction with the EPA’s handling of this disaster, along with not being clear about exactly what toxins have been released into the river. The people of the Nation are concerned about the water quality and how it will affect drinking water, cattle, and crops. The EPA seems to have made quite a few mistakes in dealing with this spill; New Mexico’s Governor Martinez says that she did not even find out about the spill from the EPA. She received the information from tribal officials in Southern Ute (Garrison,

The Government is not going to listen to the Indians, because of their skin but before they decided to move it by the reservation, it was in North Dakota but the landowners were complaining on how it could spill on their land. They move it to the Sioux Falls where the reservation is, they put it right there because they know that the Indians cannot do nothing about it. Another thing is that the government do not that they digging in their ancestors graves and are ruining their ancestral

One of the most controversial topics of this year is the Dakota pipeline protest, creating conflict between the Sioux tribe and the oil industry. The pipeline is to “be built by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and is designed to transport as many as 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois.” as stated by Time magazine, Justin Worland. The pipeline would bridge oil wells in the state’s Bakken Shale, where the development has opened billions of gallons of new oil to recovery, to other valuable consumer markets. However , the issue with this project is that the pipeline would travel underneath the Missouri River, in which is the primary drinking water source for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe . For this reason the Sioux tribe and other environmental activists are upset and for good reason ; no one has the right to step into their territory because it isn’t our land. By the Treaty of Fort Laramie, by the unnecessary harsh act law enforce underwent, and for the fact that they rejected the

That is three times the legal limit of 0.10 in the state of Alaska (Dorfman 1).  Since water pollution was not even a concern till about 20 years ago, we are paying for mistakes of the past as well.  For years the oil refinery business went unregulated and companies dumped their products where they chose.  This problem has built up into waste dumps that no one knows what to do with (Schou 2).  Papua New Guinea was the victim of a California firm promising hopes “to build a $38 million detoxification plant to process 600,000 metric tons of toxic waste a month”  (Lewis and Chepesiuk 2).  This was a scam because the majority of the waste was shipped before the plant was built with promises that it would be built in the near future.  Also, over half the chemicals could never be recycled and would be harmful to the oceans.