a slow-motion ecological disaster unfolding across a century
June 16, 2022 4:03 PM Subscribe
On Lake Superior, a $1 billion eco-disaster is swallowing the coast [MLive]
It is the enduring legacy of historic mining, a vestige of the Keweenaw Peninsula’s heyday as the world’s greatest source of copper. For more than 100 years, roughly 50 billion pounds [of stamp sand] dumped in a pile so large it once extended a half mile into the lake, has been slowly, inexorably, eroding south.
Basically all of our future is going to be trying to cope with our past indifference.
posted by hippybear at 7:05 PM on June 16, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:05 PM on June 16, 2022 [10 favorites]
Our children's future is going to be coping with their grandparents' indifference. The choice we have is whether they see their parents as having been on their side.
posted by biogeo at 8:56 PM on June 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 8:56 PM on June 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
Just like the invasive species here, another reason for funding based on a transient value system clashing with present reality.
Like they say in Michigan, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour.
posted by 517 at 9:08 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Like they say in Michigan, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour.
posted by 517 at 9:08 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Our children's future is going to be coping with their grandparents' indifference. The choice we have is whether they see their parents as having been on their side.
Like they say, if you can't grow it, you gotta mine for it. Hopefully all these wonder tools we now have at our disposal due to what we've taken out of the ground can help us get out of this mess.
tick, tick, tick...
posted by alex_skazat at 9:12 PM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Like they say, if you can't grow it, you gotta mine for it. Hopefully all these wonder tools we now have at our disposal due to what we've taken out of the ground can help us get out of this mess.
tick, tick, tick...
posted by alex_skazat at 9:12 PM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
2014 I took a trip up there, and walked the trail to Mosquito Beach. I was parched and out of water with an empty bottle. I went out into the water a bit, dunked the bottle in, and drank. It was alright (I'm still alive and reasonably fit today :) ). Nowadays I'm hearing and reading about the possibility (nothing certain here) of algal blooms becoming an occurrence up there, which would be heartbreaking - all through childhood and through a part of young adulthood I considered the further north the cleaner and more undisturbed. Then again, those years, I didn't really consider the implications of the existence of, say, Duluth and Green Bay.
Same trip a group of Great Lakes Research buddies and I would have a fire on Breaker's beach on the north end of the Keweenaw waterway. The beach is stamp sands. I bottled some up.
That trip, as a 25-year-old, the gravity of industrial waves had permanently struck - I checked out some of the mining ruins up there, and the museum pieces scattered about the parks there.
What have we done? What are we doing? Really?
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:37 PM on June 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
Same trip a group of Great Lakes Research buddies and I would have a fire on Breaker's beach on the north end of the Keweenaw waterway. The beach is stamp sands. I bottled some up.
That trip, as a 25-year-old, the gravity of industrial waves had permanently struck - I checked out some of the mining ruins up there, and the museum pieces scattered about the parks there.
What have we done? What are we doing? Really?
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:37 PM on June 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
Events like the Second World War and the Cold War are, in large measure, why we are in such a mess today. We mined iron and lead and copper and uranium like there was no tomorrow. We dumped toxic manufacturing waste in fields next to the factories. We built an unshielded nuclear reactor under a football field in the middle of Chicago. We did it for survival, but it had the opposite effect in the long run.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:11 AM on June 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:11 AM on June 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
We go up to Fort Wilkins in the Keweenaw Peninsula every year for a week long camping trip. Aside from the usual camping stuff my geologist wife and her friends tour old mines, search through old slag piles and sneak into active slag piles through swampland in order to avoid getting arrested for trespassing.
If you look through all the mining museums you'll get stories about technological advancement, capitalism run wild and failed attempts at worker solidarity. However in the ten years I've been going there I've never seen any mention of the ecological damage that came from the mines, at least not this specific ecological damage.
Obviously it makes sense, no one ever wants to talk about this stuff. Not even museums that were established by those who dislike the previous owners of the mines.
posted by charred husk at 7:40 AM on June 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
If you look through all the mining museums you'll get stories about technological advancement, capitalism run wild and failed attempts at worker solidarity. However in the ten years I've been going there I've never seen any mention of the ecological damage that came from the mines, at least not this specific ecological damage.
Obviously it makes sense, no one ever wants to talk about this stuff. Not even museums that were established by those who dislike the previous owners of the mines.
posted by charred husk at 7:40 AM on June 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
The saddest quote from that article is this:
“It’s less than a stealth bomber, but still a lot of money,” said Jay Parent, a district supervisor with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).
If it was a stealth bomber, there's be no issues with paying for it.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:43 AM on June 17, 2022 [14 favorites]
“It’s less than a stealth bomber, but still a lot of money,” said Jay Parent, a district supervisor with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).
If it was a stealth bomber, there's be no issues with paying for it.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:43 AM on June 17, 2022 [14 favorites]
Like they say in Michigan, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour.
Apart from the fact that the interval is five minutes, we say the same thing in Seattle.
posted by y2karl at 8:05 AM on June 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
Apart from the fact that the interval is five minutes, we say the same thing in Seattle.
posted by y2karl at 8:05 AM on June 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
We built an unshielded nuclear reactor under a football field in the middle of Chicago.
I do enjoy that all this is documented in pencil drawings
posted by alex_skazat at 8:11 AM on June 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
I do enjoy that all this is documented in pencil drawings
posted by alex_skazat at 8:11 AM on June 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
Events like the Second World War and the Cold War are, in large measure, why we are in such a mess today. […] We did it for survival, but it had the opposite effect in the long run.
True, although the real error was that, after those events were over, we didn't bother to go back and clean up the mess.
There is basically no civilization without mining. There aren't enough metals—even just plain old iron and aluminum ores—sitting on the surface to meet industrial needs. Sure, you can build a lot of stuff out of concrete, but the limestone still needs to be mined, as does the coal or coke used to de-oxidize it, and the CO2 emissions are awful to boot. (Also you need a fair amount of steel rebar for concrete construction.)
Maybe at some point we'll be able to lasso an asteroid or two a year, splash them down somewhere (that's gonna be a NIMBY problem fer sure), and close all the metal mines for good. But not sure I'll live to see it. Guess we'll see.
But we could do mining a lot better. There's no reason why we have to tolerate huge above-ground tailings piles and waste ponds. We could require that stuff be put back where it came from, below (or at least separated from) surface and groundwater sources. Most mining processes produce a greater volume of tailings than the rocky ore they extract, so it would be necessary to essentially "mine dirt" to create room for it underground, but piles of dirt left aboveground are a lot better than toxic tailings.
As with so many other problems, the issue is that, on one hand, mining interests have corrupted the regulatory apparatus that is supposed to constrain their behavior, while on the other hand, we allow cheap imports of raw materials and finished goods from countries without even the halfassed regulatory protections that we have in the US. The result is a sort of "pincer movement" crushing any attempt to tighten regulations here at home. Mining companies push back on regulations directly via political corruption, and can also viably threaten to just close domestic mines (with the job losses that will involve) and move operations to friendlier jurisdictions. Until we fix those two problems—which will absolutely cause prices to consumers and industry to rise, and drive inflation—I don't see very much changing.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:14 AM on June 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
True, although the real error was that, after those events were over, we didn't bother to go back and clean up the mess.
There is basically no civilization without mining. There aren't enough metals—even just plain old iron and aluminum ores—sitting on the surface to meet industrial needs. Sure, you can build a lot of stuff out of concrete, but the limestone still needs to be mined, as does the coal or coke used to de-oxidize it, and the CO2 emissions are awful to boot. (Also you need a fair amount of steel rebar for concrete construction.)
Maybe at some point we'll be able to lasso an asteroid or two a year, splash them down somewhere (that's gonna be a NIMBY problem fer sure), and close all the metal mines for good. But not sure I'll live to see it. Guess we'll see.
But we could do mining a lot better. There's no reason why we have to tolerate huge above-ground tailings piles and waste ponds. We could require that stuff be put back where it came from, below (or at least separated from) surface and groundwater sources. Most mining processes produce a greater volume of tailings than the rocky ore they extract, so it would be necessary to essentially "mine dirt" to create room for it underground, but piles of dirt left aboveground are a lot better than toxic tailings.
As with so many other problems, the issue is that, on one hand, mining interests have corrupted the regulatory apparatus that is supposed to constrain their behavior, while on the other hand, we allow cheap imports of raw materials and finished goods from countries without even the halfassed regulatory protections that we have in the US. The result is a sort of "pincer movement" crushing any attempt to tighten regulations here at home. Mining companies push back on regulations directly via political corruption, and can also viably threaten to just close domestic mines (with the job losses that will involve) and move operations to friendlier jurisdictions. Until we fix those two problems—which will absolutely cause prices to consumers and industry to rise, and drive inflation—I don't see very much changing.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:14 AM on June 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
Butte Montana…
posted by Windopaene at 10:51 AM on June 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Windopaene at 10:51 AM on June 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was gobsmacked by the size of the mine in Butte and how close Berkeley Pit and the Yankee Doodle tailings dam are to the town. Over 40 billon gallons of highly acidic polluted water in the pit…..and then behind the dam 6.5 trillion gallons of toxic polluted sludge. The milkshakes at Bonanza Freeze were good though.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:22 PM on June 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:22 PM on June 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
The essence of our current economic system is to funnel all the riches into a few pockets, and force everyone else to deal with the "external" costs, whether environmental, societal, psychic, etc. Joke's on everyone though, because you can only do this for so long before everything collapses for everyone.
The Great Law of Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which spanned present day Michigan is worth noting.
posted by nikoniko at 1:10 AM on June 19, 2022
The Great Law of Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which spanned present day Michigan is worth noting.
posted by nikoniko at 1:10 AM on June 19, 2022
Naturally none of the heirs to the various mineral corporations and their current corporate ownership will pay a penny to clean things up.
posted by sotonohito at 11:08 AM on June 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by sotonohito at 11:08 AM on June 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you are interested in this interaction between geological history in the Great Lakes region and today's challenges, I recommend Under Our Feet. Season 1 focused on the geology of Wisconsin, but they did go a little farther afield when it made sense to.
posted by rockindata at 11:31 AM on June 20, 2022
posted by rockindata at 11:31 AM on June 20, 2022
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(you know, the royal we)
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:41 PM on June 16, 2022 [5 favorites]