Pretty Little Facts...

“Many countries require reclamation plans for coal mining sites, undoing all the environmental damages to water supplies, destroyed habitats, and poor air quality is a long and problematic task. This land disturbance is on a vast scale. In the US, between 1930 and 2000, coal mining altered about 2.4 million hectares [5.9 million acres] of natural landscape, most of it originally forest. Attempts to re-seed land destroyed by coal mining is difficult because the mining process has so thoroughly damaged the soil. For example, in Montana, replanting projects had a success rate of only 20-30 percent, while in some places in Colorado only 10 percent of oak aspen seedlings that were planted survived.”(Green Peace. Mining Impacts. 15 April 2010).

There have been recent case studies document in Ohio America and in the past in Pennsylvania America. The university of Pennsylvania uncovers a case study based on acid mine drainage caused by abandoned mines. The Department of Environmental Protection in the US is now have to deal with the long and tedious rehabilitation of streams and rivers in the West Branch Schuylkill and Upper Schuylkill. (Tara Sadak. 4.1.08).

It is estimated that nearly 19, 300 kilometers of streams and rivers and 72,000 hectares of lakes have been polluted world wide through mining operations. This was documented in 2005. It is only imaginable how these figures must be today. As the media of breaking headlines “contaminated water world wide” shocked people and the outburst and trend to fix this has been phenomenal. (Johnson and Hallberg, 2005).

“In China, coal mining has degraded the quality of land of an estimated 3.2 million hectares, according to a 2004 estimate. The overall restoration rate (the ratio of reclaimed land area to the total degraded land area) of mine wasteland was only about 10–12 percent.”(Green Peace. Mining Impacts. 15 April 2010).

““Some of South Africa’s mineral-rich areas are home to the country’s most vulnerable communities.” said Mamphela Ramphele, chairperson of the gold-mining company Gold Fields and a director at mining conglomerate Anglo American, during the world’s largest mining investment conference Mining Indaba 2012, which took place from 6 to 9 February in Cape Town, South Africa. “A lot of firms say that the problems linked to mining are beyond their control. They should however realize and acknowledge that the extraction of minerals have hefty social costs“. Companies must own the problem and use their innovative power to find solutions. Sustainability should be one of their strategic imperatives and companies should contribute to development.”” (Radio Netherlands WorldWide Africa. Miriam Mannak. 10.02.12).