For historical background: California formerly extracted the majority of the world's rare earth elements,
https://www.google.com/maps/place/McLaughlin+Mine/@38.837955...
Thus: This is good, despite any feelings about regulatory burdens.
The US is blessed with incredible mineral wealth that is rarely exploited anymore because so many people harbor these kinds of naive assumptions, which manifests as regulations. Consequently, we depend on countries like China to supply these minerals since they are not held hostage by these misconceptions.
Wyoming’s advantage over California is that they have a reality-based perspective on mineral resource extraction, instead of outsourcing it to China so that they can pretend to be environmentally virtuous.
Saying it’s in the middle of no where doesn’t mean it has no impact on others. Coal slurry spills and similar have washed downstream in creeks and rivers causing drinking water issues in places like West Virginia in recent years.
Here’s a simple thing with chemicals for cleaning coal where basic eye sight inspections meant anyone could have seen and recognized the issues and done something, but instead were allowed to fail, causing mass poisoning concerns for 300,000 people, https://grist.org/politics/no-rules-governed-tank-that-leake...
Especially in the US, where these regulations lag severely, waiting until the abuse and damage gets completely out of hand.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
Unless I've been sorely mislead, California isn't a tropical jungle. There are colours other than green out there. If the haze is Chinese smog rather than just haze that is a problem, but visually there is nothing there that is problematic.
America is not China. The EPA still exists.
Less and less of it the more a certain party is in power.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4291864-house-...
It’s reasonable to offer exceptions for mines in the Mojave, but baking that into the regulations requires even more complexity.
The Mountain Pass mine in the link above is just off I15, maybe a 45 minute drive from Las Vegas. That's not right on top of a housing development, but it's hardly "remote".
Groom Lake and the National Test Site (where the US set off literally hundreds of nuclear bombs) is roughly the same distance from Las Vegas, just in a slightly different direction. [https://maps.app.goo.gl/oKc83mrnptUSPVJ2A?g_st=ic]
That area is about as remote and in hospitable to human life as anyone can find in the lower 48 once you get off the highway. The only way it would get more remote is if someone kept driving and took a turn somewhere along there. I’ve spent plenty of time out in those deserts.
It’s very easy to not show up on someone’s radar ever again [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Germans].
Watershed impacts are actually what killed gold mining in the California foothills - there's still plenty of gold there, we just can't get it with current technologies.
Mixing drinking water, mines and mineral resources doesn't end well for anyone.
Same reason that the nuclear test site hazard is mostly blown dust, not water contamination despite literally hundreds and hundreds of nuclear detonations. They have their own isolated watershed and water table, like most of those valleys.
The LA/Vegas corridor may look pristine and empty (owing in no small part to significant regulation that keeps it that way!), but it's not remotely a "low density" population area.
I-15 is high traffic, but once you get off it, you’re in the middle of nowhere for most of its length. Like ‘if you get out of your car and stop walking, no one will find your body for decades’ kind of middle of nowhere. Have you driven I15?
That it is regulated to prevent building definitely helps preserve that - but doesn’t change that nature?
Not that anyone would likely be building in those alkali lake beds anyway.
So, you are saying that there is a dense urban strip city hidden under the regulated, pristine desert?
Or... what?
What regulation keeps it that way?
If you go exploring in Balarat or around Death Valley, it’s easy to find intact mines that are 70+ years old with everything nearly intact (except for the rat nests anyway).
As to if that regulation is appropriate given its remote location, etc. that’s up to the California state legislature.
Notably, mining is a much larger part of the state economy in Nevada, on the other side of the border.
But I do know that water sheds in California frequently transit through heavily populated areas and/or feed into key reservoirs.
To be clear: this is a generic comment about regulation in proportion to number of lives impacted, not the details of this find.
Also to note: I essentially live surrounded by Superfund sites that brought about the entire silicon revolution. I'm acutely aware of the actual generational impacts.