Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunz
CYD,
Thanks for the response. It is often times quite surprising how quick vegetation comes back. Any idea what the water quality was in the surrounding area? My primary concern here is the impact on the water resources. Including any impact on the surrounding fish populations.
What the issue surrounds here is taking a non-renewable resource(metals) at the expense of a renewable one(salmon)
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Sorry, I’m not much of a fisherman, but I'll give it a shot. I’m not sure about the strip mines, but I don’t believe there was any particular impact on the streams and rivers. As for the underground mines, there was a large creek I always thought was a river that’s known as the Red Moshannon. The entire valley the creek runs thru is coated with a reddish dust-like compound that comes from the stream’s mist, which has a high iron concentration from the old coal and clay mines. It actually looks rather striking. The water is acidic, so it’s bad for fish, but the cranberries are growing great. I’m not sure that that’s a particularly good measure though. The mines were opened in the early 1800's and closed, I believe, in the late 1800's / early 1900's, and the mines were extracting coal and clay, so I’m not sure if current mining practices for gold and copper would have an environmental impact that would be at all similar.