Abandoned mines cover the West
hcn.org
hcn.org
He remains fascinated with them, and we'd often travel to mining towns (one in particular) to check out the neighborhood and scenery. When I was in high school, our big "California Vacation" was to the Mother Lode Country, all up and down the center of California, from SD to Yreka (I considered it absurd that there was "Eureka"--also the state motto--and the comparatively obscure "Yreka" even further north).
We stopped in places like Virginia City, Lodi, Sacramento, and more. We saw Sutter's Fort. I saw punk rockers in a small town just hanging out. All my sister wanted was a pool at our motel. We fought and bickered constantly. It was a huge disaster, but very scenic and generated plenty of memorable family photos.
What's amazing is how badly I fared in my systematic science classes beginning in high school. I started taking them over summertime, figuring I could handle a relaxed, accelerated schedule, but was far too social and flirting with girls to pay any attention. I didn't really expect to use hard natural sciences in an IT career anyway. I don't even use Calculus!
A billion dollars in actual gold is pretty real. Look at superfund sites like Captain Jack mine in Boulder. significant un-managed harm and not that much commercial output.
This will increase resource costs, put downwards pressure on consumption, etc but we'll still function as a society.
But, really, I think we’re both posting with a bit of hyperbole here. Of course monetizing resources is how we get resources. OTOH, not monetizing every resource is fine - there exists the possibility of future value in some resources that we haven’t discovered.
That person made a billion dollars and left the residents and state with the problems. Business genius.
Wow that's really saying something.
Whether it carries any risk to the environment depends on local factors.
(The Wikipedia article is for the Sulfur Bank Mercury Mine. The McLaughlin mine is referenced due to how gold was discovered, but it's about 15 miles away)
You used to be able to roll up on a mine tailing pile or even go into the mine to look for mineral specimens. Even though the mines are no longer economically viable, they were a gold mine for rock hounds and educators looking for interesting rocks.
Now all of that is gone and all we have left is bullshit commercial operators that make fake tailing mixed with commercially sourced gems.
What's next, no more bungy jumping, free climbing, surfing The Right, sinkhole diving, mustering cattle, etc?
The guy who taught me to swing a Brunton was over four times my age, and whenever we were hiking in to a site he led us in: this basically meant we young vegetables would be frantically scrambling up to a nearby ridge so we could spot where he'd got to, only to eventually notice him waving cheerfully at us from the next ridge line over.
'Wee bit risky" is right, keep your head on a swivel and don't be on the quad bike when the irate bull flips it and all is okay.
Your leading surveyor was very much our father when we were in single digits .. four hour long walks across rugged landscapes and down gorges with him as a barely visible dot waaaay up ahead.
He's a lot slower now approaching 90 .. but can still split wood and shovel a tonne or two.
They're not exactly burdened by extreme sports injuries, most surfers, for example, are injured crossing roads, in car accidents, or at work falling off roofs, etc.
( source: one of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Stanley conversations back in the day )
The whole inland gold belt region is filled with abandoned shafts and it's rare anyone falls down them.
What's the cost benefit in fencing off tens of thousands of individual pre existing shafts and to what degree of robust security construstion do you recommend? More to the point, what's the tax payer out of pocket cost for that?
You don't appear to have actually thought this through in any pragmatic sense.
Being uninformed may result in accidental injury or death.
The Division of Minerals is legislatively mandated to conduct the State's AML program to identify inactive mines, rank their degree of hazard, and carry out activities to secure these sites
The back end of https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/industries/m... carried a much larger database of global abandoned mines withmore infomation on why production lapsed (a good number may still be economically feasible with modern techniques) that wasn't simply limited to Nevada. That data should still be there on request.