Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?

Technocrat

Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?

President4242

Wed Sep 19 09:00:55 -0700 2007

Environment.

manage

If I only had a million dollars- a closed mine in Oregon is leaching water laden with copper and zinc. An environmental disaster for fish downstream- as five million gallons a year wind their way downstream towards the Rogue River and the Pacific.

Currently the DEQ and their contractor are concentrating on stopping the flow. But with record prices on zinc and copper, it occurs to me that they're overlooking the obvious business opportunity and a way to fund the cleanup. Southern Oregon gets plenty of sun- if they'd only pipe the runnoff into solar distillers, they could recover the copper and zinc tailings to sell at a profit, and send clear, distilled water downstream to the fish habitats. Or better yet, make it a complete win-win for the environment and pipe the distilled water to Southern California where it's needed. With a flow like that, the mine could become profitable again.

Technology exists and is in use

Martin Blank

Wed Sep 19 11:19:46 -0700 2007
manage

Either the History Channel or Discovery Channel had something on a similar project in Montana where a former mine that filled in with ground water is being tapped (so to speak) to get the dissolved minerals. As I recall, it may even be a biological method of extraction, but it's been a while since I watched the episode.

Technology exists and is in use

pyro9

Wed Sep 19 14:18:08 -0700 2007
manage

I saw a show on Discovery Science about extremophiles. One segment talked about a research project using them to clean up badly polluted water in a mining pit that would kill most bacteria. IIRC they concentrate the metals and use the cyanide for chemosynthesis making the water harmless.

That could be useful here.

Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?/go for it

zogger

Wed Sep 19 14:19:12 -0700 2007
manage

Write up a proposal and tryout some venture capital guys with it. Who knows, but it seems feasible if the concentrations are high enough. A lot of guys make a fair to middling living working old gold mine tailings now, getting dust mostly, but at 700 an ounce, it adds up!

Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?

peacefinder

Wed Sep 19 15:05:17 -0700 2007
manage

Stopping - or at least containing - the flow is a good idea no matter how you slice it. If someone ever wants to run a recovery on the metals, the more dilute they are the harder it will be to make the recovery effort pay off.

Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?

Uncle Entity

Wed Sep 19 16:20:06 -0700 2007
manage

Currently the DEQ and their contractor are concentrating on stopping the flow. But with record prices on zinc and copper, it occurs to me that they're overlooking the obvious business opportunity and a way to fund the cleanup.

The Superfund and subsequently the people fund the cleanup so they have absolutely no incentive to look into any missed opportunity. They stop the flow enough to collect their share of government funds and just move on to the next environmental disaster brought to us by the evil foreign capitalists.

Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?

President4242

Wed Sep 19 16:56:56 -0700 2007
manage

This case might be different. BTW, Superfund sites cash doesn't come from taxes, but from fines imposed on the supposedly responsible evil capitalists.

The reason this case might be different? They're evil foreign capitalists- the DEQ failed to get them to pay, and so will the EPA, because neither agency has jurisdiction in Japan. But the obvious business opportunity actually cuts the cost of the cleanup & self-funds. So it's a viable option.

Formosa Mine Cleanup in Oregon- disaster or opportunity?

Uncle Entity

Wed Sep 19 17:33:41 -0700 2007
manage

The site is asking me to register so I can't quote but from what I can tell this mine is on BLM land and they shut them down for exceeding their quota. This implies there is still plenty of copper or whatever they were mining left to make for a profitable venture along with recycling the trailings. Tragedy of the commons I suppose...

BTW, Superfund sites cash doesn't come from taxes, but from fines imposed on the supposedly responsible evil capitalists.

From the wikipedia:

The Superfund law paid for toxic waste cleanups at sites where no other responsible parties could pay for a cleanup by assessing a tax on petroleum and chemical industries.