1.
Broken Hill, New South Wales
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Broken Hill is an isolated mining city in the far west of outback New South Wales, Australia. It is near the border with South Australia on the crossing of the Barrier Highway and it is 315 m above sea level, with a hot desert climate, an average rainfall of 235 mm. The closest major city is Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, Broken Hill has been referred to as The Silver City, the Oasis of the West, and the Capital of the Outback. Although over 1,100 km west of Sydney and surrounded by semi-desert, the town has a high potential for solar power, given its extensive daylight hours of sunshine. The Broken Hill Solar Plant, which was completed in 2015, is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, unlike the rest of New South Wales, Broken Hill observes Australian Central Standard Time, the same time zone used in South Australia and the Northern Territory. This is because at the time the Australian dominions adopted standard time, Broken Hills only direct link was with Adelaide. Similarly, Broken Hill is regarded as part of South Australia for the purposes of postal parcels rates, Broken Hill also used to be a break of gauge station where the state railway systems of South Australia and New South Wales met. Broken Hill is Australias longest-lived mining city, in 1844, the explorer Charles Sturt saw and named the Barrier Range, and at the time referred to a Broken Hill in his diary. Silver ore was discovered on this broken hill in 1883 by a boundary rider named Charles Rasp. The broken hill that gave its name to Broken Hill actually comprised a number of hills appeared to have a break in them. The broken hill no longer exists, having been mined away, the area was originally known as Willyama. Prior to Sturts naming, the area was referred to by the local Aboriginal population as the Leaping Crest. Broken Hills massive orebody, which formed about 1,800 million years ago, has proved to be among the worlds largest silver–lead–zinc mineral deposits, the orebody is shaped like a boomerang plunging into the earth at its ends and outcropping in the centre. The protruding tip of the orebody stood out as a rocky ridge amongst undulating plain country on either side. This was known as the hill by early pastoralists. Miners called the ore body the Line of Lode, a unique mineral recently identified from Broken Hill has been named Nyholmite after one of the citys famous sons Ron Nyholm. Lead with the signature of the Broken Hill deposits has been found across the entire continent of Antarctica in ice cores dating back to the late nineteenth century. Many of these waterholes are still secret from non-Indigenous people
2.
Gangue
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In mining, gangue is the commercially worthless material that surrounds, or is closely mixed with, a wanted mineral in an ore deposit. It is thus distinct from overburden, which is the rock or materials overlying an ore or mineral body that are displaced during mining without being processed. The separation of mineral from gangue is known as mineral processing, mineral dressing and it is a necessary and often significant, aspect of mining. It can be a process, depending on the nature of the minerals involved. The ease with which the ore can be separated also plays an important part, minerals that were once thought of as gangue, and were dumped, may later find a commercial use. When this happens the old dumps are often reworked to extract the wanted mineral, for example, in copper mines in the 19th century the mineral arsenopyrite was dumped until arsenic became popular as an insecticide later in the century. In the 21st century, the use of gangue has been considered from a point of view. For example, in 2002, about 130 million tons of gangue were produced per year from mining in China. This, mixed with the 60 million tons of coal mud also produced, could be used for generation. The estimated cost of projects would be up to 4 billion yuan. Froth flotation Magnetic separation Vanning Extractive Metallurgy Mineral processing An Elementary Outline Of Mechanical Processes, by G. W. Danforth
3.
Ore
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An ore is a type of rock that contains sufficient minerals with important elements including metals that can be economically extracted from the rock. The ores are extracted from the earth through mining, they are refined to extract the valuable element. The grade or concentration of an ore mineral, or metal, as well as its form of occurrence, will directly affect the costs associated with mining the ore. The cost of extraction must thus be weighed against the value contained in the rock to determine what ore can be processed. Metal ores are generally oxides, sulfides, silicates, or native metals that are not commonly concentrated in the Earths crust, the ores must be processed to extract the metals of interest from the waste rock and from the ore minerals. Ore bodies are formed by a variety of geological processes, the process of ore formation is called ore genesis. An ore deposit is an accumulation of ore and this is distinct from a mineral resource as defined by the mineral resource classification criteria. An ore deposit is one occurrence of a particular ore type, Ore deposits are classified according to various criteria developed via the study of economic geology, or ore genesis. Stratiform arkose-hosted and shale-hosted copper, typified by the Zambian copperbelt and this identifies, early on, whether further investment in estimation and engineering studies is warranted and identifies key risks and areas for further work. This is because the distribution of ores is unequal and dislocated from locations of peak demand. Other, lesser, commodities do not have international clearing houses and benchmark prices and this generally makes determining the price of ores of this nature opaque and difficult. Such metals include lithium, niobium-tantalum, bismuth, antimony and rare earths, most of these commodities are also dominated by one or two major suppliers with >60% of the worlds reserves. The London Metal Exchange aims to add uranium to its list of metals on warrant, the World Bank reports that China was the top importer of ores and metals in 2005 followed by the USA and Japan. Economic geology Mineral resource classification Ore genesis Petrology Froth Flotation Extractive metallurgy DILL, the “chessboard” classification scheme of mineral deposits, Mineralogy and geology from aluminum to zirconium, Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 100, Issue 1-4, June 2010, Pages 1-420
4.
Overburden
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In mining, overburden is the material that lies above an area that lends itself to economical exploitation, such as the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. Overburden is distinct from tailings, the material that remains after economically valuable components have been extracted from the generally finely milled ore, a related term is interburden, meaning material that lies between two areas of economic interest, such as the material separating coal seams within strata. Overburden may also be used as a term to describe all soil, in particle physics, the overburden of an underground laboratory may be important to shield the facility from cosmic radiation that can interfere with experiments. In arboriculture, the word is used for the soil over the top of the roots of a tree collected from the wild. Gangue Spoil tip Bates, R. L. and Jackson, glossary of geology American Geological Institute, Alexandria, Virginia. Haering, K. C. Daniels W. L. changes in mine soil properties resulting from overburden weathering Journal of environmental quality 22, pp. 194–200. Characteristics of coal mine overburden important to plant growth Journal of environmental quality 10, the dictionary definition of overburden at Wiktionary
5.
Placer mining
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Placer mining is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit or by various surface excavating equipment or tunnelling equipment, the metal or gemstones, having been moved by stream flow from an original source such as a vein, are typically only a minuscule portion of the total deposit. Since gems and heavy metals like gold are more dense than sand. The containing material may be too loose to safely mine by tunnelling, where water under pressure is available, it may be used to mine, move, and separate the precious material from the deposit, a method known as hydraulic mining, hydraulic sluicing or hydraulicking. The word placer derives from the Spanish placer, meaning shoal or alluvial/sand deposit, from Catalan placer, from plassa, from Medieval Latin placea the origin word for place and plaza in English. The word in Spanish is thus derived from placea and refers directly to an alluvial or glacial deposit of sand or gravel. Placers supplied most of the gold for a part of the ancient world. Hydraulic mining methods such as hushing were used widely by the Romans across their empire, one of the largest sites was at Las Médulas, where seven 30 mile long aqueducts were used to work the alluvial gold deposits through the first century AD. Placer mining continues in many areas of the world as a source of diamonds, industrial minerals and metals, gems, platinum, an area well protected from the flow of water is a great location to find gold. Gold is very dense and is found in a stream bed. Many different gold deposits are dealt with in different ways, placer deposits attract many prospectors because their costs are very low. There are many different places gold could be placed, such as a residual, alluvial, residual deposits are more common where there has been weathering on rocks and where there hasn’t been water. They are deposits which have not been washed away yet or been moved, the residual usually lies at the site of the lode. This type of deposit undergoes rock weathering, alluvial or eluvial deposits sometimes have the largest gold deposit and are very common. This deposit is created when a force of nature moves or washes the gold away and it contains pieces of ore that have been washed away from the lode. Alluvial deposits are the most common type of placer gold and this type of deposit occurs mostly in valleys. Bench deposits are created when gold reaches a stream bed, gold accumulations in an old stream bed that are high are called bench deposits. They can be found on slopes that drain into valleys
6.
Underground mining (hard rock)
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Soft rock mining refers to excavation of softer minerals such as salt, coal, or oil sands. Accessing underground ore can be achieved via a decline, inclined vertical shaft or adit, declines can be a spiral tunnel which circles either the flank of the deposit or circles around the deposit. The decline begins with a box cut, which is the portal to the surface, depending on the amount of overburden and quality of bedrock, a galvanized steel culvert may be required for safety purposes. They may also be started into the wall of an open cut mine, shafts are vertical excavations sunk adjacent to an ore body. Shafts are sunk for ore bodies where haulage to surface via truck is not economical, Shaft haulage is more economical than truck haulage at depth, and a mine may have both a decline and a ramp. Adits are horizontal excavations into the side of a hill or mountain and they are used for horizontal or near-horizontal ore bodies where there is no need for a ramp or shaft. They are also built and maintained as an emergency safety access from the underground workings. Levels are excavated horizontally off the decline or shaft to access the ore body, stopes are then excavated perpendicular to the level into the ore. There are two phases of underground mining, development mining and production mining. Development mining is composed of excavation almost entirely in waste rock in order to access to the orebody. To start the mining first step is to make the path to go down, the path is defined as Decline as describe above. Before the start of Decline all preplanning of Power facility, drilling arrangement, dewatering, ventilation and, production mining is further broken down into two methods, long hole and short hole. Short hole mining is similar to development mining, except that it occurs in ore, there are several different methods of long hole mining. Typically long hole mining requires two excavations within the ore at different elevations below surface, holes are drilled between the two excavations and loaded with explosives. The holes are blasted and the ore is removed from the bottom excavation, one of the most important aspects of underground hard rock mining is ventilation. Ventilation is also used to manage underground temperatures for the workers, in deep, hot mines ventilation is used to cool the workplace, however, in very cold locations the air is heated to just above freezing before it enters the mine. Ventilation raises are typically used to transfer ventilation from surface to the workplaces, the primary sources of heat in underground hard rock mines are virgin rock temperature, machinery, auto compression, and fissure water. Other small contributing factors are human body heat and blasting, some means of support is required in order to maintain the stability of the openings that are excavated
7.
Mill (grinding)
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A mill is a device that breaks solid materials into smaller pieces by grinding, crushing, or cutting. Such comminution is an important unit operation in many processes, there are many different types of mills and many types of materials processed in them. Historically mills were powered by hand, working animal, wind or water, today they are usually powered by electricity. The grinding of solid matters occurs under exposure of mechanical forces that trench the structure by overcoming of the interior bonding forces, after the grinding the state of the solid is changed, the grain size, the grain size disposition and the grain shape. Milling also refers to the process of breaking down, separating, sizing, aggregate milling processes are also used to remove or separate contamination or moisture from aggregate or soil and to produce dry fills prior to transport or structural filling. To calculate the needed grinding work against the grain size changing three half-empirical models are used and these can be related to the Hukki relationship between particle size and the energy required to break the particles. In stirred mills, the Hukki relationship does not apply and instead, a reliable value for the grain sizes dA and dE is d80. This value signifies that 80% of the matter has a smaller grain size. The Bonds grinding coefficient for different materials can be found in various literature, to evaluate the grinding results the grain size disposition of the source material and of the ground material is needed. Grinding degree is the ratio of the sizes from the grain disposition, pretended grinding degree Z a = d 1 a The discharge die gap a of the grinding machine is used for the ground solid matter in this formula. In materials processing a grinder is a machine for producing fine particle size reduction through attrition, see also crusher for mechanisms producing larger particles. A typical type of grinder is the ball mill. Ball mills normally operate with a ball charge of 30%. Ball mills are characterized by their diameter and longer length. The feed is at one end of the cylinder and the discharge is at the other, ball mills are commonly used in the manufacture of Portland cement and finer grinding stages of mineral processing, one example being the Sepro tyre drive Grinding Mill. Industrial ball mills can be as large as 8.5 m in diameter with a 22 MW motor, however, small versions of ball mills can be found in laboratories where they are used for grinding sample material for quality assurance. A rotating drum causes friction and attrition between steel rods and ore particles, but note that the term rod mill is also used as a synonym for a slitting mill, which makes rods of iron or other metal. Rod mills are less common than ball mills for grinding minerals, the rods used in the mill, usually a high-carbon steel, can vary in both the length and the diameter
8.
Slurry
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A slurry is a thin sloppy mud or cement or, in extended use, any fluid mixture of a pulverized solid with a liquid, often used as a convenient way of handling solids in bulk. Slurries behave in ways like thick fluids, flowing under gravity but are also capable of being pumped if not too thick. It contains large amount of catalyst, in form of sediments hence the denomination of slurry. C, a General Theory of the Hydraulic Transport of Solids in Full Suspension Ravelet, F. Bakir, F. Khelladi, S. Rey, R. Experimental study of transport of large particles in horizontal pipes. Ming, G. Ruixiang, L. Fusheng, N. Liqun, X. Hydraulic Transport of Coarse Gravel—A Laboratory Investigation Into Flow Resistance
9.
Pyrite
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The mineral pyrite, or iron pyrite, also known as fools gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula FeS2. This minerals metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue give it a resemblance to gold. The color has led to the nicknames brass, brazzle. Pyrite is the most common of the sulfide minerals, the name pyrite is derived from the Greek πυρίτης, of fire or in fire, in turn from πύρ, fire. 1550, the term had become a term for all of the sulfide minerals. Pyrite is usually associated with other sulfides or oxides in quartz veins, sedimentary rock. Despite being nicknamed fools gold, pyrite is sometimes found in association with small quantities of gold, Gold and arsenic occur as a coupled substitution in the pyrite structure. In the Carlin–type gold deposits, arsenian pyrite contains up to 0.37 wt% gold, Pyrite has been used since classical times to manufacture copperas, that is, iron sulfate. Iron pyrite was heaped up and allowed to weather, the acidic runoff from the heap was then boiled with iron to produce iron sulfate. In the 15th century, such leaching began to replace the burning of sulfur as a source of sulfuric acid, by the 19th century, it had become the dominant method. Pyrite remains in use for the production of sulfur dioxide, for use in such applications as the paper industry. Thermal decomposition of pyrite into FeS and elemental sulfur starts at 540 °C, a newer commercial use for pyrite is as the cathode material in Energizer brand non-rechargeable lithium batteries. Pyrite is a material with a band gap of 0.95 eV. During the early years of the 20th century, pyrite was used as a detector in radio receivers. Pyrite detectors occupied a midway point between galena detectors and the more mechanically complicated perikon mineral pairs, Pyrite detectors can be as sensitive as a modern 1N34A germanium diode detector. Pyrite has been proposed as an abundant, inexpensive material in low-cost photovoltaic solar panels, synthetic iron sulfide was used with copper sulfide to create the photovoltaic material. Pyrite is used to make marcasite jewelry, marcasite jewelry, made from small faceted pieces of pyrite, often set in silver, was known since ancient times and was popular in the Victorian era. Marcasite jewelry does not actually contain the mineral marcasite, from the perspective of classical inorganic chemistry, which assigns formal oxidation states to each atom, pyrite is probably best described as Fe2+S22−
10.
Iron(II) sulfide
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Iron sulfide or ferrous sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula FeS. In practice, iron sulfides are often iron-deficient non-stoichiometric, some of the hydrogen sulfide will react with metal ions in the water to produce metal sulfides, which are not water-soluble. These metal sulfides, such as sulfide, are often black or brown. Pyrrhotite is a product of the Desulfovibrio bacteria, a sulfate reducing bacteria. When eggs are cooked for a time, the yolks surface may turn green. This is due to iron sulfide which forms as iron from the yolk meets hydrogen sulfide released from the egg white by the heat and this reaction occurs more rapidly in older eggs as the whites are more alkaline. Peptone iron agar contains the amino acid cysteine and a chemical indicator, the degradation of cysteine releases hydrogen sulfide gas that reacts with the ferric citrate to produce ferrous sulfide. Iron sulfide Troilite Pyrite Iron-sulfur world theory
11.
Acid mine drainage
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Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage, or acid rock drainage refers to the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines. Areas where the earth has been disturbed may create acid rock drainage. In many localities, the liquid drains from coal stocks, coal handling facilities, coal washeries, and coal waste tips can be highly acidic. Historically, the discharges from active or abandoned mines were called acid mine drainage. The term acid rock drainage, or ARD, was introduced in the 1980s and 1990s to indicate that acidic drainage can originate from other than mines. None of these names have gained general acceptance. Sub-surface mining often progresses below the table, so water must be constantly pumped out of the mine in order to prevent flooding. When a mine is abandoned, the pumping ceases, and water floods the mine and this introduction of water is the initial step in most acid rock drainage situations. Tailings piles or ponds, mine waste dumps, and coal spoils are also an important source of acid mine drainage. After being exposed to air and water, oxidation of metal sulfides within the surrounding rock, colonies of bacteria and archaea greatly accelerate the decomposition of metal ions, although the reactions also occur in an abiotic environment. These microbes, called extremophiles for their ability to survive in conditions, occur naturally in the rock. Special extremophiles known as Acidophiles especially favor the low pH levels of abandoned mines, in particular, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans is a key contributor to pyrite oxidation. Metal mines may generate highly acidic discharges where the ore is a mineral or is associated with pyrite. In these cases the predominant metal ion may not be iron but rather zinc, copper, the most commonly mined ore of copper, chalcopyrite, is itself a copper-iron-sulfide and occurs with a range of other sulfides. Thus, copper mines are often major culprits of acid mine drainage, at some mines, acidic drainage is detected within 2–5 years after mining begins, whereas at other mines, it is not detected for several decades. In addition, acidic drainage may be generated for decades or centuries after it is first detected, for this reason, acid mine drainage is considered a serious long-term environmental problem associated with mining. Although a host of chemical processes contribute to acid mine drainage, water temperatures as high as 47 °C have been measured underground at the Iron Mountain Mine, and the pH can be as low as -3.6. Organisms which cause acid mine drainage can thrive in waters with pH very close to zero, negative pH occurs when water evaporates from already acidic pools thereby increasing the concentration of hydrogen ions
12.
Coal mining
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Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its content, and, since the 1880s, has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore, in the United Kingdom and South Africa a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine a pit, the above-ground structures the pit head. In Australia, colliery generally refers to a coal mine. In the United States colliery has been used to describe a coal mine operation, Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunnelling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks, small-scale mining of surface deposits dates back thousands of years. For example, in Roman Britain, the Romans were exploiting most of the major coalfields by the late 2nd century AD. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 18th century and later spread to continental Europe, international trade expanded rapidly when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships. Until the late nineteenth century coal was mined using a pick and shovel. Coal-cutting machines were introduced in the 1880s, by 1912, surface mining was conducted with steam shovels designed for coal mining. The most economical method of extraction from coal seams depends on the depth and quality of the seams. Coal mining processes are differentiated by whether they operate on the surface or underground, many coals extracted from both surface and underground mines require washing in a coal preparation plant. Surface mining and deep underground mining are the two methods of mining. Coal that occurs at depths of 180 to 300 ft are usually deep mined, for example, some western U. S. coal that occur at depths in excess of 200 ft are mined by the open pit methods, due to thickness of the seam 60–90 feet. Coals occurring below 300 ft are usually deep mined, However, there are open pit mining operations working on coal seams up to 1000–1500 feet below ground level, for instance Tagebau Hambach in Germany. When coal seams are near the surface, it may be economical to extract the coal using open cut mining methods, open cast coal mining recovers a greater proportion of the coal deposit than underground methods, as more of the coal seams in the strata may be exploited. In this mining method, explosives are first used in order to break through the surface or overburden, the overburden is then removed by draglines or by shovel and truck. Once the coal seam is exposed, it is drilled, fractured, the coal is then loaded onto large trucks or conveyors for transport to either the coal preparation plant or directly to where it will be used
13.
Oil sands tailings ponds
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Large volumes of tailings are a byproduct of bitumen extraction from the oil sands and managing these tailings is one of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry. This map shows the extent of the oil sands in Alberta, the three oil sand deposits are known as the Athabasca Oil Sands, the Cold Lake oil sands, and the Peace River oil sands. These settling basins were meant to be temporary, a major hindrance to the monitoring of oil sands produced waters has been the lack of identification of individual compounds present. By better understanding the nature of the complex mixture of compounds, including naphthenic acids, it may be possible to monitor rivers for leachate. Such identification of individual acids has for many years proved to be impossible, ninety percent of the tailings water can be reused for oil extraction. The concentrations of chemicals may be harmful to fish and oil on the harmful to birds. The Government of Alberta reported in 2013 that tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands covered an area of about 77 square kilometres. The Syncrude Tailings Dam or Mildred Lake Settling Basin is an embankment dam that is, by volume of construction material and it is located 40 km north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada at the northern end of the Mildred Lake lease owned by Syncrude Canada Ltd. The dam and the artificial lake within it are constructed and maintained as part of ongoing operations by Syncrude in extracting oil from the Athabasca Oil Sands. However COSIA argues that CNRLs Horizon External Tailings Facility is a relatively young pond with a configuration that minimizes the Pond Centre depositional environment and it has a side hill facility with a three-sided dyke impounding fluid against the natural ground that rises away from the containment dyke. Under Directive 85 fluid tailings must be ready to reclaim within ten years of the closing of an oil sands mine, the dried MFT can then be reclaimed in situ or moved to another location for final reclamation. Suncor hoped this would reduce the time for water reclamation from tailings to weeks rather than years, for the reporting periods from 2010 to 2012, Suncor had a lower-than-expected fines capture performance from this technology. Syncrude used the older composite tailings technology to capture fines at its Mildred Lake project, Syncrude had a lower-than-expected fines capture performance in 2011/2012 but exceeded expectations in 2010/2011. By 2010 Suncor had transformed their first tailings pond, Pond One, into Wapisiw Lookout, in 2007 the area was a 220-hectare pond of toxic effluent but several years later there was firm land planted with black spruce and trembling aspen. Wapisiw Lookout represents only one percent of tailings ponds in 2011, by 2011 only 65 square kilometres were cleaned up and about one square kilometre was certified by Alberta as a self-sustaining natural environment. Wapisiw Lookout has not yet been certified, closure operations of Pond One began in 2007. The jello-like mature fine tails were pumped and dredged out of the pond and relocated to another tailings pond for long-term storage, the MFT was then replaced with 30 million tonnes clean sand and then topsoil that had been removed from the site in the 1960s. The 1.2 million cubic meters of topsoil over the surface, to a depth of 50 centimetres, was placed on top of the sand in the form of hummocks and it was then planted with reclamation plants
14.
Stade
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Stade is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany and part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region. It is the seat of the named after it. The city was first mentioned in a document from 994 and it includes the urban districts of Bützfleth, Hagen, Haddorf and Wiepenkathen which have a district council of their own with some autonomous decision making rights. Stade is located on the lower Elbe river and the German Timber-Frame Road, the first human settlers came to the Stade area in 30,000 BC. Since 1180 Stade belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, in early 1208 King Valdemar II of Denmark and his troops conquered Stade. In August Valdemar IIs cousin being in enmity with the king, in 1209 Emperor Otto IV persuaded his ally Valdemar II to withdraw into the north of the Elbe, and the deposed Prince-Archbishop Valdemar took Stade. On 2 May 1209 Otto IV granted important town privileges to Stade, Otto IV confirmed the burghers to be personally free and recognised them constituting a political entity of their own law, the burgenses and optimi cives of Stade. Property within the boundaries could not be subjected to feudal overlordship and was to be freely inherited without feudal claims to reversion. Fair juridical procedures were constituted and maximal fines fixed, Otto IV obliged himself to prevent burghers from being taken as hostages and to liberate captured burghers. After Otto IV had changed his mind and reinvested Prince-Archbishop Valdemar with the See in 1211, in 1213 Ottos elder brother Count Palatine Henry V of the Rhine, reconquered Stade for the Prince-Archbishop. In 1215 Henry repelled another Danish attack on Stade, in the winter of 1216 Valdemar II and his Danish troops, unable to take the city of Stade, ravaged the County of Stade. From then on Stade remained a part of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, in medieval times, Stade was a prominent member of the Hanseatic League, but was later eclipsed by Hamburg. In 1611 the city signed a contract with Sephardic Jews, allowing the foundation of a community, in 1648, by the Treaty of Westphalia, the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen underwent a constitutional transformation from a prince-bishopric into a monarchy, the Duchy of Bremen. The duchy and the neighboured Principality of Verden, colloquially referred to as Bremen-Verden, were granted by the Treaty of Westphalia as an appanage to the Swedish crown, Stades heyday lasted until the Thirty Years War. In 1628 Tilly conquered the town, shortly thereafter, Sweden took possession of it until 1636. After a period of Danish occupation, Sweden finally recaptured it in 1643 and was officially granted possession of it, together with the Archbishopric of Bremen. Two-thirds of the town were razed in the town fire on 26 May 1659. The town was again to the same plan
15.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
16.
Waste
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Waste and wastes are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance which is discarded after use, or it is worthless, defective. Examples include municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, wastewater, radioactive waste, according to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal of 1989, Art. 2, Wastes are substance or objects, which are disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of by the provisions of national law. Wastes may be generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the consumption of final products, residuals recycled or reused at the place of generation are excluded. Under the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, Art,3, the European Union defines waste as an object the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard. For a more structural description of the Waste Directive, see the European Commissions summary and it is most commonly measured by size or weight, and there is a stark difference between the two. For example, organic waste is much heavier when it is wet, on a global scale it is difficult to report waste because countries have different definitions of waste and what falls into waste categories, as well as different ways of reporting. Based on incomplete reports from its parties, the Basel Convention estimated 338 million tonnes of waste was generated in 2001, for the same year, OECD estimated 4 billion tonnes from its member countries. Toxic waste materials can contaminate surface water, groundwater, soil, and air which causes problems for humans, other species. Waste treatment and disposal produces significant green house gas emissions, notably methane, Waste management is a significant environmental justice issue. Many of the environmental burdens cited above are often borne by marginalized groups, such as racial minorities, women. NIMBY is the opposition of residents to a proposal for a new development because it is close to them, however, the need for expansion and siting of waste treatment and disposal facilities is increasing worldwide. Environmental policies such as pay as you throw can reduce the cost of management, Waste recovery can curb economic costs because it avoids extracting raw materials and often cuts transportation costs. Economic assessment of municipal waste management systems – case studies using a combination of life-cycle assessment, the location of waste treatment and disposal facilities often reduces property values due to noise, dust, pollution, unsightliness, and negative stigma. The informal waste sector consists mostly of waste pickers who scavenge for metals, glass, plastic, textiles, and other materials and then trade them for a profit. This sector can significantly alter or reduce waste in a system, but other negative economic effects come with the disease, poverty, exploitation. Resource recovery is the retrieval of recyclable waste, which was intended for disposal and it is the processing of recyclables to extract or recover materials and resources, or convert to energy
17.
Aluminium
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Aluminium or aluminum is a chemical element in the boron group with symbol Al and atomic number 13. It is a silvery-white, soft, nonmagnetic, ductile metal, Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite, Aluminium is remarkable for the metals low density and its ability to resist corrosion through the phenomenon of passivation. Aluminium and its alloys are vital to the industry and important in transportation and structures, such as building facades. The oxides and sulfates are the most useful compounds of aluminium, despite its prevalence in the environment, no known form of life uses aluminium salts metabolically, but aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals. Because of these salts abundance, the potential for a role for them is of continuing interest. Aluminium is a soft, durable, lightweight, ductile. It is nonmagnetic and does not easily ignite, a fresh film of aluminium serves as a good reflector of visible light and an excellent reflector of medium and far infrared radiation. The yield strength of aluminium is 7–11 MPa, while aluminium alloys have yield strengths ranging from 200 MPa to 600 MPa. Aluminium has about one-third the density and stiffness of steel and it is easily machined, cast, drawn and extruded. Aluminium atoms are arranged in a cubic structure. Aluminium has an energy of approximately 200 mJ/m2. Aluminium is a thermal and electrical conductor, having 59% the conductivity of copper. Aluminium is capable of superconductivity, with a critical temperature of 1.2 kelvin. Aluminium is the most common material for the fabrication of superconducting qubits, the strongest aluminium alloys are less corrosion resistant due to galvanic reactions with alloyed copper. This corrosion resistance is reduced by aqueous salts, particularly in the presence of dissimilar metals. In highly acidic solutions, aluminium reacts with water to form hydrogen, primarily because it is corroded by dissolved chlorides, such as common sodium chloride, household plumbing is never made from aluminium
18.
Mining
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Mining is extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth usually from an orebody, lode, vein, seam, reef or placer deposits. These deposits form a mineralized package that is of economic interest to the miner, ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. Mining is required to obtain any material that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water. Mining of stones and metal has been a human activity since pre-historic times, Mining operations usually create a negative environmental impact, both during the mining activity and after the mine has closed. Hence, most of the nations have passed regulations to decrease the impact. Work safety has long been a concern as well, and modern practices have significantly improved safety in mines, levels of metals recycling are generally low. Unless future end-of-life recycling rates are stepped up, some rare metals may become unavailable for use in a variety of consumer products, due to the low recycling rates, some landfills now contain higher concentrations of metal than mines themselves. Since the beginning of civilization, people have used stone, ceramics and, later and these were used to make early tools and weapons, for example, high quality flint found in northern France, southern England and Poland was used to create flint tools. Flint mines have been found in areas where seams of the stone were followed underground by shafts. The mines at Grimes Graves and Krzemionki are especially famous, other hard rocks mined or collected for axes included the greenstone of the Langdale axe industry based in the English Lake District. The oldest-known mine on archaeological record is the Lion Cave in Swaziland, at this site Paleolithic humans mined hematite to make the red pigment ochre. Mines of an age in Hungary are believed to be sites where Neanderthals may have mined flint for weapons. Ancient Egyptians mined malachite at Maadi, at first, Egyptians used the bright green malachite stones for ornamentations and pottery. Later, between 2613 and 2494 BC, large building projects required expeditions abroad to the area of Wadi Maghareh in order to secure minerals and other resources not available in Egypt itself. Quarries for turquoise and copper were found at Wadi Hammamat, Tura, Aswan and various other Nubian sites on the Sinai Peninsula. Mining in Egypt occurred in the earliest dynasties, the gold mines of Nubia were among the largest and most extensive of any in Ancient Egypt. These mines are described by the Greek author Diodorus Siculus, who mentions fire-setting as one used to break down the hard rock holding the gold. One of the complexes is shown in one of the earliest known maps, the miners crushed the ore and ground it to a fine powder before washing the powder for the gold dust
19.
Quebec
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Quebec is the second-most populous province of Canada and the only one to have a predominantly French-speaking population, with French as the sole provincial official language. Quebec is Canadas largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division and it also shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. Quebec is Canadas second-most populous province, after Ontario, most inhabitants live in urban areas near the Saint Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City, the capital. Approximately half of Quebec residents live in the Greater Montreal Area, the Nord-du-Québec region, occupying the northern half of the province, is sparsely populated and inhabited primarily by Aboriginal peoples. Even in central Quebec at comparatively southerly latitudes winters are severe in inland areas, Quebec independence debates have played a large role in the politics of the province. Parti Québécois governments held referendums on sovereignty in 1980 and 1995, in 2006, the House of Commons of Canada passed a symbolic motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada. These many industries have all contributed to helping Quebec become an economically influential province within Canada, early variations in the spelling of the name included Québecq and Kébec. French explorer Samuel de Champlain chose the name Québec in 1608 for the colonial outpost he would use as the seat for the French colony of New France. The province is sometimes referred to as La belle province, the Province of Quebec was founded in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 after the Treaty of Paris formally transferred the French colony of Canada to Britain after the Seven Years War. The proclamation restricted the province to an area along the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, the Treaty of Versailles ceded territories south of the Great Lakes to the United States. After the Constitutional Act of 1791, the territory was divided between Lower Canada and Upper Canada, with each being granted an elected legislative assembly, in 1840, these become Canada East and Canada West after the British Parliament unified Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada. This territory was redivided into the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario at Confederation in 1867, each became one of the first four provinces. In 1898, the Canadian Parliament passed the first Quebec Boundary Extension Act that expanded the provincial boundaries northward to include the lands of the aboriginal peoples. This was followed by the addition of the District of Ungava through the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act of 1912 that added the northernmost lands of the Inuit to create the modern Province of Quebec. In 1927, the border between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador was established by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Located in the part of Canada, and part of Central Canada. Its topography is very different from one region to another due to the composition of the ground, the climate. The Saint Lawrence Lowland and the Canadian Shield are the two main regions, and are radically different
20.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
21.
Tailings
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Tailings are distinct from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlies an ore or mineral body and is displaced during mining without being processed. The amount of tailings can be large, ranging from 90–98% for some copper ores to 20–50% of the other minerals. In the latter, the extraction of minerals from ore requires comminution, because of this comminution, tailings consist of a slurry of fine particles, ranging from the size of a grain of sand to a few micrometres. Mine tailings are usually produced from the mill in slurry form, the effluent from the tailings from the mining of sulfidic minerals has been described as the largest environmental liability of the mining industry. These tailings contain large amounts of pyrite and Iron sulfide, which are rejected from the ores of copper and nickel. Although harmless underground, these minerals are reactive toward air in the presence of microorganisms, when applied to coal mining tailings ponds and oil sands tailings ponds, the term tailings refers to fine waste suspended in water. Bauxite tailings is a waste product generated in the production of aluminium. Making provision for the approximately 77 million tons that is produced annually is one of the most significant problems for the mining industry. Early mining operations often did not take steps to make tailings areas environmentally safe after closure. Tailings dams are often the most significant environmental liability for a mining project, the rejected minerals and rocks liberated through mining and processing are not part of the aerobic ecological systems and are unstable. They have the potential to damage the environment by releasing toxic metals, by acid drainage, the greatest danger of tailings ponds is dam failure, with the most publicized failure in the U. S. On average, worldwide, there is one big accident involving a tailings dam each year, other disasters caused by tailings dam failures are, the 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill and the Ajka alumina plant accident. Historically, tailings were disposed of in the most convenient manner, because of concerns about these sediments in the water and other issues, tailings ponds came into use. Bounded by impoundments, these dams typically use local materials including the tailings themselves, traditionally, the only option for tailings storage was to deal with a tailings slurry. This slurry is a stream of the tailings solids within water that was sent to the tailings storage area. The modern tailings designer has a range of products to choose from depending upon how much water is removed from the slurry prior to discharge. The removal of not only can create a better storage system in some cases. In a 1994 description of tailings impoundments, however, the U. S. EPA stated that dewatering methods may be prohibitively expensive except in special circumstances, subaqueous storage of tailings has also been used
22.
West Virginia
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West Virginia /ˌwɛst vərˈdʒɪnjə/ is a state located in the Appalachian region of the Southern United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the north, West Virginia is the 9th smallest by area, is ranked 38th in population, and has the second lowest household income of the 50 United States. The capital and largest city is Charleston, West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20,1863, and was a key Civil War border state. The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States, the unique position of West Virginia means that it is often included in several geographical regions, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Upland South, and the Southeastern United States. It is the state that is entirely within the area served by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The state is noted for its mountains and rolling hills, its historically significant logging and coal mining industries and it is one of the most densely karstic areas in the world, making it a choice area for recreational caving and scientific research. The karst lands contribute to much of the states cool trout waters and it is also known for a wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities, including skiing, whitewater rafting, fishing, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, and hunting. Many ancient man-made earthen mounds from various mound builder cultures survive, especially in the areas of Moundsville, South Charleston. The artifacts uncovered in these give evidence of village societies and they had a tribal trade system culture that crafted cold-worked copper pieces. The Iroquois drove out other American Indian tribes from the region to reserve the upper Ohio Valley as a ground in the 1670s. Siouan language tribes such as the Moneton had also recorded in the area previously. West Virginia was originally part of the British Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1776, residents of the western and northern counties set up a separate government under Francis Pierpont in 1861, which they called the restored government. Most voted to separate from Virginia and the new state was admitted to the Union in 1863, in 1864 a state constitutional convention drafted a constitution, which was ratified by the legislature without putting it to popular vote. West Virginia abolished slavery and temporarily disfranchised men who had held Confederate office or fought for the Confederacy, West Virginias history has been profoundly affected by its mountainous terrain, numerous and vast river valleys, and rich natural resources. These were all factors driving its economy and the lifestyles of its residents, a 2010 analysis of a local stalagmite revealed that Native Americans were burning forests to clear land as early as 100 BC. Some regional late-prehistoric Eastern Woodland tribes were involved in hunting and fishing, practicing the slash. Another group progressed to the more time-consuming, advanced companion crop fields method of gardening, also continuing from ancient indigenous people of the state, field space and time was given to tobacco growing through to early historic. Maize did not make a contribution to the diet until after 1150 BP
23.
Buffalo Creek flood
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The resulting flood unleashed approximately 132,000,000 US gallons of black waste water, cresting over 30 ft high, upon the residents of 16 coal towns along Buffalo Creek Hollow. Out of a population of 5,000 people,125 were killed,1,121 were injured,507 houses were destroyed, in addition to forty-four mobile homes and 30 businesses. The disaster destroyed or damaged homes in Saunders, Pardee, Lorado, Craneco, Lundale, Stowe, Crites, Latrobe, Robinette, Amherstdale, Becco, Fanco, Braeholm, Accoville, Crown and Kistler. In its legal filings, Pittston Coal referred to the accident as an Act of God, Dam #3, constructed of coarse mining refuse dumped into the Middle Fork of Buffalo Creek starting in 1968, failed first, following heavy rains. The water from Dam #3 then overwhelmed Dams #2 and #1, Dam #3 had been built on top of coal slurry sediment that had collected behind dams #1 and #2, instead of on solid bedrock. Dam #3 was approximately 260 feet above the town of Saunders when it failed, the Governors Commission of Inquiry report called for new legislation and further inquiry by the local prosecutor. The Citizens Commission report concluded that the Buffalo Creek-Pittston Coal Company was guilty of murdering at least 124 men, women and children, Moore, Jr. three days before he left office in 1977. The lawyers for the plaintiffs, Arnold & Porter of Washington, west Virginia has yet to build the center, though the center was promised by Governor Moore in May 1972. Gerald M. Stern, an attorney with Arnold & Porter, sociologist Kai T. Eriksons book later won the 1977 Sorokin Award, granted by the American Sociological Association for an outstanding contribution to the progress of sociology. Dennis Prince and some 625 survivors of the flood sued the Pittston Coal Company and they settled in June 1974 for $13.5 million, or approximately $13,000 for each individual after legal costs. A second suit was filed by 348 child survivors, who sought $225 million, kerry Albright became known as the miracle baby of the disaster. Running from the edge of the water, his mother threw him just above the flood level moments before she drowned. He survived with few ill effects, and was raised by his father and his survival gave hope and inspiration to other survivors. In the NCIS episode Corporal Punishment, Dr. Mallard references the Buffalo Creek Disaster when discussing PTSD in a soldier returning from the Iraq War, on their 2004 release, the band American Minor includes a song titled Buffalo Creek that was written about the Buffalo Creek disaster. Aberfan disaster Coal slurry impoundment Martin County coal slurry spill Sludge The Buffalo Creek Flood, west Virginia Division of Culture and History. Guide to the Council of Southern Mountains Records includes documents pertaining to Buffalo Creek interviews, articles, berea College Special Collections and Archives
24.
New Guinea
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New Guinea is a large Island in the South West Pacific region. It is the worlds second-largest island, after Greenland, covering an area of 785,753 km2. The island is divided between two countries, Papua New Guinea to the east, and Indonesia to the west, the island has been known by various names. The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West and its etymology is unclear, one theory states that it is from Tidore, the language used by the Sultanate of Tidore, which controlled parts of the islands coastal region. The name came from papo and ua, which means not united or, ploeg reports that the word papua is often said to derive from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning frizzly-haired, referring to the highly curly hair of the inhabitants of these areas. When the Portuguese and Spanish explorers arrived in the island via the Spice Islands, when the Dutch colonized it as part of Netherlands East Indies, they called it Nieuw Guinea. The name Irian was used in the Indonesian language to refer the island and Indonesian province, the name was promoted in 1945 by Marcus Kaisiepo, brother of the future governor Frans Kaisiepo. It is taken from the Biak language of Biak Island, and means to rise and this name of Irian is the name used in the Biak language and other languages such as Serui, Merauke and Waropen. The name was used until 2001, when the name Papua was again used for the island, the name Irian, which was originally favored by natives, is now considered to be a name imposed by the authority of Jakarta. New Guinea is an island to the north of Australia, and it is isolated by the Arafura Sea to the west and the Torres Strait and Coral Sea to the east. A spine of east–west mountains, the New Guinea Highlands, dominates the geography of New Guinea, stretching over 1,600 km from the head to the tail of the island. The western half of the island of New Guinea contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4,884 m high, the tree line is around 4,000 m elevation and the tallest peaks contain permanent equatorial glaciers—which have been retreating since at least 1936. Various other smaller mountain ranges occur both north and west of the central ranges, except in high elevations, most areas possess a warm humid climate throughout the year, with some seasonal variation associated with the northeast monsoon season. At 4,884 metres, Puncak Jaya makes New Guinea the worlds fourth highest landmass, Puncak Mandala, located in Papua, is the second highest peak on the island at 4,760 metres. Puncak Trikora, also in Papua, is 4,750 metres, mount Wilhelm is the highest peak on the PNG side of the border at 4,509 metres. Its granite peak is the highest point of the Bismarck Range, mount Giluwe 4,368 metres is the second highest summit in PNG. It is also the highest volcanic peak in Oceania, another major habitat feature is the vast southern and northern lowlands. Stretching for hundreds of kilometres, these include lowland rainforests, extensive wetlands, savanna grasslands, the southern lowlands are the site of Lorentz National Park, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site
25.
Ok Tedi River
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The Ok Tedi is a river in New Guinea. The Ok Tedi Mine is located near the headwaters of the river, the largest settlement of the Western Province, Tabubil is located near its banks. Known as the Ok Tedi River by the Yonggom people who live on its western bank, Ok is the word for water or river in the Ok languages family. It is a tributary of the Fly River, tributaries of the Ok Tedi include the Birim. The Kiunga-Tabubil Highway runs parallel with the river for the majority of its course, until just south of Ningerum where the highway veers southeast towards Kiunga, the river is extremely fast-moving and has a massive capacity. It is situated on a bank, which allows for the river to change course quickly without warning. The sand conditions underneath the river and the high rainfall of the catchment area make it one of the fastest moving rivers in the world. The roar from the river can be heard for many kilometres through the jungle of the district. The pristine river was devastated by the Ok Tedi environmental disaster and it is the worlds largest mining company measured by 2013 revenues. Ok Tedi Environmental Disaster Description and maps of the Fly River system, including the Ok Tedi River
26.
2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill
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The polluted waters eventually reached the Tisza and then the Danube, killing large numbers of fish in Hungary and Yugoslavia. The spill has been called the worst environmental disaster in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster, aurul, the mine operator, is a joint venture company formed by the Australian company Esmeralda Exploration and the Romanian government. The company claimed it had the ability to clean up a by-product of gold mining, the toxic tailings, promising to deal with them and to extract remaining gold from them via gold cyanidation, the company shipped its waste product to a dam near Bozinta Mare, Maramureş County. On the night of January 30,2000, a dam holding contaminated waters burst and 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide-contaminated water spilled over some farmland, Esmeralda Exploration blamed excessive snowfall for the dam failure. After the spill, the Someș had cyanide concentrations of over 700 times the permitted levels, the Someș flows into the Tisza, Hungarys second largest river, which then flows into the Danube. The spill contaminated the drinking supplies of over 2.5 million Hungarians, in addition to cyanide, heavy metals were also washed into the river and had a long-lasting negative impact on the environment. Wildlife was particularly affected on the Tisza, on a stretch, virtually all living things were killed,200 tons of it was the fish in these rivers. Large quantities of fish died due to the toxicity of cyanide in the waters of the rivers, affecting 62 species of fish, the Romanian government claimed that the fish had died of cold, and they were not at fault. After the cyanide entered the Danube, the volume of the rivers water diluted the cyanide. Five weeks later, a spill of contaminated waters hit the region, a dyke burst in Baia Borşa, Maramureş County and 20,000 cubic metres of zinc, lead and copper-contaminated water made its way into the Tisza. The Hungarian government called the storing of cyanide next to a river madness, a European Union report on the disaster blamed the design faults at the mine. In mid-February 2000, as the spill reached the Romanian section of the Danube, the Romanian government temporarily banned fishing, german metal band Rammstein produced a song about the spill, called Donaukinder. Three attempts were made in the Romanian Parliament to ban gold cyanidation in Romania, val di Stava dam collapse 1998 Residue dam wall collapse of the Aznalcollar mine Ajka alumina plant accident
27.
Ajka alumina plant accident
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The Ajka alumina sludge spill was an industrial accident at a caustic waste reservoir chain of the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in Ajka, Veszprém County, in western Hungary. On 4 October 2010, at 12,25 CEST, the corner of the dam of reservoir no.10 collapsed. The mud was released as a 1–2 m wave, flooding several nearby localities, including the village of Kolontár, ten people died, and 150 people were injured. About 40 square kilometres of land were initially affected, the spill reached the Danube on 7 October 2010. It was not initially clear how the containment at the reservoir had been breached, although the accident came after a wet summer in Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that the cause of the spill was presumably human error, the red mud involved in the accident is a waste product of the Bayer process, which refines bauxite into a form of aluminium oxide called alumina. The mud primarily contains non-aluminium compounds present in the bauxite ore, iron oxide, the compound from which the red color originates, is the main component, but it also contains other compounds. According to a release by MAL, the mud had the following chemical percentage make-up. Unlike many other mine tailings, red mud does not contain high levels of heavy metals. Analyses of the mud at Kolontár on behalf of Greenpeace showed levels of chromium 660 mg/kg, arsenic 110 mg/kg and mercury 1.2 mg/kg. The Hungarian government has stated that the mud is not poisonous, and this opinion was also supported by a paper published in the journal Science in October 2010. The wave of mud flooded streets in Kolontár, where seven people were confirmed dead, and Devecser, the cause of death of the Kolontár victims has not been formally confirmed, a spokesman for the National Directorate General for Disaster Management said that they had probably drowned. A further six people were still missing 24 hours after the accident, the NDGDM said that the high-pH mud was considered hazardous and would cause an alkaline reaction on contact if not washed off with clean water. The mayor of Devecser said that 80–90 people had taken to hospital with chemical burns. Péter Jakabos, a doctor in the hospital in Győr where many of the injured had been taken, Magyar Alumínium said that the mud was not considered to contain toxic elements according to EU standards. Initial measurements by the NDGDM showed the sludge to be extremely basic, the waste extinguished all life in the Marcal river, and reached the Danube on 7 October, prompting countries located further down the river to develop emergency plans in response. On 11 October, the Hungarian government announced that the director of MAL had been arrested. Also on the 11th, the government took control of MAL, the government planned to focus on compensation for the incident, job security, and identifying further locations at risk of accidents
28.
Drainage
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Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of surface and sub-surface water from an area. The internal drainage of most agricultural soils is good enough to prevent severe waterlogging, all houses in the major cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had access to water and drainage facilities. Waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets, the invention of hollow-pipe drainage is credited to Sir Hugh Dalrymple, who died in 1753. New drainage systems incorporate geotextile filters that retain and prevent fine grains of soil from passing into, geotextiles are synthetic textile fabrics specially manufactured for civil and environmental engineering applications. Geotextiles are designed to retain fine soil particles while allowing water to pass through, in a typical drainage system they would be laid along a trench which would then be filled with coarse granular material, gravel, sea shells, stone or rock. The geotextile is then folded over the top of the stone, groundwater seeps through the geotextile and flow within the stone to an outfell. In high groundwater conditions a perforated pipe is laid along the base of the drain to increases the volume of water transported in the drain. Alternatively, the prefabricated plastic drainage system made of HDPE called SmartDitch, often incorporating geotextile, over the past 30 years geotextile and PVC filters have become the most commonly used soil filter media. They are cheap to produce and easy to lay, with factory controlled properties that ensure long term filtration performance even in fine silty soil conditions, seattles Public Utilities created a pilot program called Street Edge Alternatives Project. The project focuses on designing a system to provide drainage that more closely mimics the natural landscape prior to development than traditional piped systems, the streets are characterized by ditches along the side of the roadway, with plantings designed throughout the area. An emphasis on non curbed sidewalks allows water to more freely into the areas of permeable surface on the side of the streets. Because of the plantings the run off water from the area does not all directly go into the ground. Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems are designed to encourage contractors to install drainage system that closely mimic the natural flow of water in nature. Since 2010 local and neighbourhood planning in the UK is required by law to factor SUDS into any development projects that they are responsible for, slot drainage has proved the most breakthrough product of the last twenty years as a drainage option. Both stainless steel and concrete channel slot drainage have become industry standards on construction projects, the civil engineer is responsible for drainage in construction projects. They set out from the all the roads, street gutters, drainage, culverts. During the construction process he/she will set out all the levels for each of the previously mentioned factors. Civil engineers and construction managers work alongside architects and supervisors, planners, quantity surveyors, typically, most jurisdictions have some body of drainage law to govern to what degree a landowner can alter the drainage from his parcel
29.
Tailings dam
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A tailings dam is typically an earth-fill embankment dam used to store byproducts of mining operations after separating the ore from the gangue. Conventional water retention dams can serve this purpose, but due to cost, Tailings can be liquid, solid, or a slurry of fine particles. Solid tailings are used as part of the structure itself. Tailings dams rank among the largest engineered structures on earth, the Syncrude Mildred Lake Tailings Dyke in Alberta, Canada, is an embankment dam about 18 kilometres long and from 40 to 88 metres high. It is the largest dam structure on earth by volume, there are key differences between tailings dams and the more familiar hydro dams. Tailings dams are designed for permanent containment, meant to remain there forever, copper, gold, uranium and other mining operations produce varied kinds of waste, much of it toxic, which pose varied challenges for long-term containment. An estimated 3,500 active tailings impoundments stand around the world, although there is no complete inventory, as of 2000 these structures experience known major failures of about 2 to 5 annually, along with 35 minor failures. Assuming the 3,500 figure is correct, this rate is more than two orders of magnitude higher than the failure rate of conventional water retention dams. Unlike water retention dams, a dam is raised in succession throughout the life of the particular mine. Typically, a base or starter dam is constructed, and as it fills with a mixture of tailings and water, material used to raise the dam can include the tailings along with dirt. There are three raised tailings dam designs, the upstream, downstream and centerline, named according to the movement of the crest during raising, the specific design used is dependent upon topography, geology, climate, the type of tailings, and cost. An upstream tailings dam consists of trapezoidal embankments being constructed on top but toe to crest of another and this creates a relatively flat downstream side and a jagged upstream side which is supported by tailings slurry in the impoundment. The downstream design refers to the raising of the embankment that positions the fill. A centerlined dam has sequential embankment dams constructed directly on top of another while fill is placed on the side for support. Type, TE - Earth, ER - Rock-fill, PG - Concrete gravity, a large number remain completely unreported, or lack basic facts when reported. There is no database for historic failures. The lack of any comprehensive tailings dam database has prevented meaningful analysis, the mining and processing byproducts collected in tailings dams are not part of the aerobic ecological systems, and are unstable. They may damage the environment by releasing toxic metals, by acid drainage, history Tailings ponds can also be a source of acid drainage, leading to the need for permanent monitoring and treatment of water passing through the tailings dam
30.
Embankment dam
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An embankment dam is a large artificial dam. It is typically created by the placement and compaction of a complex semi-plastic mound of various compositions of soil, sand, clay and it has a semi-pervious waterproof natural covering for its surface and a dense, impervious core. This makes such a dam impervious to surface or seepage erosion, such a dam is composed of fragmented independent material particles. The friction and interaction of particles binds the particles together into a stable mass rather than by the use of a cementing substance, embankment dams come in two types, the earth-filled dam made of compacted earth, and the rock-filled dam. A cross-section of an embankment dam shows a shape like a bank, most have a central section or core composed of an impermeable material to stop water from seeping through the dam. The core can be of clay, concrete, or asphalt concrete and this dam type is a good choice for sites with wide valleys. They can be built on rock or softer soils. For a rock-fill dam, rock-fill is blasted using explosives to break the rock, additionally, the rock pieces may need to be crushed into smaller grades to get the right range of size for use in an embankment dam. The building of a dam and the filling of the reservoir behind it places a new weight on the floor, the stress of the water increases linearly with its depth. Thus the stress level of the dam must be calculated in advance of building to ensure that its break level threshold is not exceeded, overtopping or overflow of an embankment dam beyond its spillway capacity will cause its eventual failure. The erosion of the material by overtopping runoff will remove masses of material whose weight holds the dam in place. Even a small sustained overtopping flow can remove thousands of tons of soil from the mass of the dam within hours. As the mass of the dam erodes, the force exerted by the reservoir begins to move the entire structure, therefore, safety requirements for the spillway are high, and require it to be capable of containing a maximum flood stage. It is common for its specifications to be such that it can contain a five hundred year flood. Recently a number of embankment dam overtopping protection systems have been developed
31.
2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill
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They caused the accident while attempting to drain ponded water near the entrance of the mine on August 5. The maintenance by the EPA was necessary because local jurisdictions had previously refused Superfund money to fully remediate the regions derelict mines, after the spill, the Silverton Board of Trustees and the San Juan County Commission approved a joint resolution seeking Superfund money. Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper declared the area a disaster zone. The spill affects waterways of municipalities in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, as of August 11, acidic water continued to spill at a rate of 500–700 US gal/min while remediation efforts were underway. Gold mining in the hills around Gold King was the income and economy for the region until 1991. The Gold King Mine was abandoned in 1923, other plant and animal species were also adversely affected in the watershed before the Gold King Mine breach. Many abandoned mines throughout Colorado are known to have problems with acid mine drainage, at the time of the accident, the EPA was working at the Gold King Mine to stem the leaking mine water going into Cement Creek. Water was accumulating behind a plug at the mines entrance and they planned to add pipes that would allow the slow release and treatment of that water before it backed up enough to blow out. Unknown to the crew, the tunnel behind the plug was already full of pressurized water. It burst through the plug soon after excavation began, in the 1990s, sections of the Animas had been nominated by the EPA as a Superfund site for clean-up of pollutants from the Gold King Mine and other mining operations along the river. Lack of community support prevented its listing, under the law, the EPA had authority to do only minor work to abate environmental impacts of the mine. Locals had feared that classifying this as a Superfund site would reduce tourism in the area, the Gold Kings adits were dry for most of the mines recent history, as the area was being drained from below by the Sunnyside Mines American Tunnel. As part of a plan, the American Tunnel was sealed up in 1996. In the absence of drainage, by 2002 a new discharge of particularly contaminated water had begun to flow from the Gold King Level 7 adit, flow there increased again after the nearby Mogul Mine was sealed by its owners in 2003. In 2006, a measurement of flow from this adit showed a peak of 314 gallons per minute. The significance of this figure is unclear since flow was not being logged continuously, by this time, the Gold King was considered one of the worst acid mine drainage sites in Colorado. This work was complicated by partial collapse of the tunnel near the entrance. It was noted that the system might not be sufficient to prevent a future blowout
32.
Pond
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A pond is a body of standing water, either natural or artificial, that is usually smaller than a lake. They may arise naturally in floodplains as part of a river system, usually they contain shallow water with marsh and aquatic plants and animals. In the countryside farmers and villagers dig a pond in their backyard or increase the depth of a pond by removing layers of mud during summer season. A wide variety of bodies of water are classified as ponds. Some ponds are created specifically for restoration, including water treatment. Others, like gardens, water features and koi ponds are designed for aesthetic ornamentation as landscape or architectural features. Fish ponds are designed for commercial breeding, and solar ponds designed to store thermal energy. Standing bodies of such as puddles, ponds, and lakes are often categorized separately from flowing water courses, such as brooks, creeks. Nutrient levels and water quality in ponds can be controlled through natural process such as growth, or through artificial filtration. The technical distinction between a pond and a lake has not been universally standardized, each of these definitions has met with resistance or disapproval, as the defining characteristics are each difficult to measure or verify. Accordingly, some organizations and researchers have settled on technical definitions of pond, even among organizations and researchers who distinguish lakes from ponds by size alone, there is no universally recognised standard for the maximum size of a pond. The international Ramsar wetland convention sets the limit for pond size as 8 hectares. Other European biologists have set the size limit at 5 ha. In practice, a body of water is called a pond or a lake on a basis, as conventions change from place to place. There are numerous examples in other states of bodies of water less than 10 acres being called lakes, as the case with Crystal Lake shows, marketing purposes may be the driving factor behind some names. Ponds can result from a range of natural processes. Rivers often leave behind ponds in natural flood plains after spring flooding, retreating glaciers can leave behind landscapes filled with small depressions, each developing its own pond, an example is the Prairie Pothole Region of North America. Some ponds are created by animals, beaver ponds are the best known example, but alligators also excavate ponds as well
33.
Sedimentation
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Sedimentation is the tendency for particles in suspension to settle out of the fluid in which they are entrained and come to rest against a barrier. This is due to their motion through the fluid in response to the acting on them. In geology, sedimentation is often used as the opposite of erosion, in that sense, it includes the termination of transport by saltation or true bedload transport. Settling is the falling of suspended particles through the liquid, whereas sedimentation is the termination of the settling process, in estuarine environments, settling can be influenced by the presence or absence of vegetation. Trees such as mangroves are crucial to the attenuation of waves or currents, even small molecules supply a sufficiently strong force to produce significant sedimentation. This process is used in the biotech industry to separate cells from the culture media. In a sedimentation experiment, the applied force accelerates the particles to a velocity v t e r m at which the applied force is exactly canceled by an opposing drag force. For small enough particles, the force varies linearly with the terminal velocity, i. e. F d r a g = f v t e r m where f depends only on the properties of the particle. Thus, measuring s can reveal underlying properties of the particle, in many cases, the motion of the particles is blocked by a hard boundary, the resulting accumulation of particles at the boundary is called a sediment. The concentration of particles at the boundary is opposed by the diffusion of the particles, the sedimentation of a single particle under gravity is described by the Mason–Weaver equation, which has a simple exact solution. The sedimentation coefficient s in this case equals m b / f, the sedimentation of a single particle under centrifugal force is described by the Lamm equation, which likewise has an exact solution. The sedimentation coefficient s also equals m b / f, where m b is the buoyant mass, the Lamm equation also has extra terms, since it pertains to sector-shaped cells, whereas the Mason–Weaver equation is one-dimensional. They settle as individual particles and do not flocculate or stick to other during settling, example, alum or iron coagulation Type 3 sedimentation is also known as zone sedimentation. In this process the particles are at a high concentration such that the particles tend to settle as a mass, zone settling occurs in lime-softening, sedimentation, active sludge sedimentation and sludge thickeners. In geology, sedimentation is the deposition of particles carried by a fluid flow, for suspended load, this can be expressed mathematically by the Exner equation, and results in the formation of depositional landforms and the rocks that constitute sedimentary record. An undesired increased transport and sedimentation of suspended material is called siltation, high sedimentation rates can be a result of poor land management and a high frequency of flooding events. If not managed properly, it can be detrimental to fragile ecosystems on the receiving end, climate change also affects siltation rates. In chemistry, sedimentation has been used to measure the size of large molecules, where the force of gravity is augmented with centrifugal force in an ultracentrifuge
34.
Bentonite
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Bentonite is an absorbent aluminium phyllosilicate clay consisting mostly of montmorillonite. It was named by Wilbur C, knight in 1898 after the Cretaceous Benton Shale near Rock River, Wyoming. The different types of bentonite are each named after the dominant element, such as potassium, sodium, calcium. Experts debate a number of problems with the classification of bentonite clays. Bentonite usually forms from weathering of volcanic ash, most often in the presence of water, however, the term bentonite, as well as a similar clay called tonstein, has been used to describe clay beds of uncertain origin. For industrial purposes, two classes of bentonite exist, sodium and calcium bentonite. In stratigraphy and tephrochronology, completely devitrified ash-fall beds are commonly referred to as K-bentonites when the dominant clay species is illite, in addition to montmorillonite and illite another common clay species that is sometimes dominant is kaolinite. Kaolinite-dominated clays are referred to as tonsteins and are typically associated with coal. Sodium bentonite expands when wet, absorbing as much as several times its dry mass in water, because of its excellent colloidal properties, it is often used in drilling mud for oil and gas wells and boreholes for geotechnical and environmental investigations. The property of swelling also makes sodium bentonite useful as a sealant, since it provides a self-sealing and it is used to line the base of landfills, for example. Various surface modifications to sodium bentonite improve some rheological or sealing performance in applications, for example. Calcium bentonite is a useful adsorbent of ions in solution, as well as fats and it is the main active ingredient of fullers earth, probably one of the earliest industrial cleaning agents. Calcium bentonite may be converted to sodium bentonite to exhibit many of sodium bentonites properties by an ion exchange process, some properties, such as viscosity and fluid loss of suspensions, of sodium-beneficiated calcium bentonite may not be fully equivalent to those of natural sodium bentonite. For example, residual calcium carbonates may result in performance of the bentonite in geosynthetic liners. Also known as potash bentonite or K-bentonite, potassium bentonite is a potassium-rich illitic clay formed from alteration of volcanic ash, the main uses of bentonite are for drilling mud, binder, purifier, absorbent, and as a groundwater barrier. As of around 1990, almost half of the US production of bentonite was used for drilling mud, bentonite is used in drilling fluids to lubricate and cool the cutting tools, to remove cuttings, and to help prevent blowouts. Much of bentonites usefulness in the drilling and geotechnical engineering industry comes from its rheological properties. Relatively small quantities of bentonite suspended in water form a viscous, most often, bentonite suspensions are also thixotropic, although rare cases of rheopectic behavior have also been reported
35.
Stoping
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Stoping is the process of extracting the desired ore or other mineral from an underground mine, leaving behind an open space known as a stope. Stoping is used when the rock is sufficiently strong not to collapse into the stope. The earliest forms of stoping were conducted with hand tools or by fire-setting, from the 19th century onward, various other explosives, power-tools, and machines came into use. As mining progresses the stope is often backfilled with tailings, or when needed for strength, in old mines, stopes frequently collapse at a later time, leaving craters at the surface. They are a danger when records of underground mining have been lost with the passage of time. A stope can be created in a variety of ways, the specific method of stoping depends on a number of considerations, both technical and economical, based largely on the geology of the ore body being mined. These include the incline of the deposit, the width of the deposit, the grade of the ore, the hardness and strength of the rock. It is common to dig shafts vertically downwards to reach the ore body, stoping then takes place from these levels. When the ore body is more or less horizontal, various forms of room and pillar stoping, cut and fill, or longwall mining can take place. In steeply-dipping ore bodies, such as lodes of tin, the stopes become long narrow near-vertical spaces, a common method of mining such vertical ore bodies is stull stoping, see below. Open stoping is generally divided into two forms based on direction, overhand and underhand stoping, which refer to the removal of ore from above or below the level. It is also possible to combine the two in a single operation, underhand stoping, also known as horizontal-cut underhand or underbreaking stoping, is the working of an ore deposit from the top downwards. Like shrinkage stoping, underhand stoping is most suitable for steeply dipping ore bodies, because of the mechanical advantage it offers hand tools being struck downward, this method was dominant prior to the invention of rock blasting and powered tools. In overhand stoping, the deposit is worked from the bottom upward, with the advent of rock blasting and power drills, it became the predominant direction of stoping. In combined stoping, the deposit is worked from the bottom upward. Breast stoping is a used in horizontal or near-horizontal ore bodies. Breast stoping lacks the steps of either underhand or overhand stoping, being mined in a singular cut. Room and pillar is a type of breast stoping, stull stoping is a form of stoping used in hardrock mining that uses systematic or random timbering placed between the foot and hanging wall of the vein
36.
Beaconsfield Mine collapse
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The Beaconsfield Mine collapse occurred on 25 April 2006 in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, Australia. Of the seventeen people who were in the mine at the time, fourteen escaped immediately following the collapse, one was killed and these two miners were rescued on 9 May 2006, two weeks after being trapped nearly a kilometre below the surface. At 9,26 p. m. on 25 April 2006 a small earthquake triggered an underground rock fall at the Beaconsfield gold mine in northern Tasmania. Geoscience Australia said that the earthquake had a magnitude of 2.2, earlier speculation had suggested that mine blasting had caused the collapse. Three of the miners working underground at the time were trapped, the mining company, Beaconsfield Mine Joint Venture, released a press statement saying they held grave concerns for the three miners wellbeing. Larry Knight, Brant Webb and Todd Russell, were the three miners who remained unaccounted for and they were in a basket at the end of the telehandlers arm, where they had been applying steel mesh to a barricade prior to backfilling a stope. The cage was partially filled with rock, and the men were buried under some rubble. Webb seemed to have been knocked unconscious for a short time, when Webb awoke, the two were able to free themselves and each other from the fallen rock by cutting through their clothes and boots, which were stuck in the rock, using Stanley knives. The miners were able to survive by drinking groundwater, seeping through the rock overhead, Webb also had a muesli bar with him, which he offered to cut in half and share with Russell. The men initially agreed to wait 24 hours to eat it and they then ate small pieces of the bar at a time, to make it last as long as possible. However, Russell later lost a portion of his half of the bar when it fell out of his pocket. On 26 April a remote-controlled earth mover began clearing the rock underground, on the morning of 27 April at 7,22 a. m. the corpse of one of the miners was found in the shaft. At around 8 p. m. the corpse was retrieved and was identified as Larry Paul Knight,44 and he was the driver of the telehandler. On 29 April they began blasting a new tunnel, detonating at least six large explosive charges to form the tunnel. The blasts dislodged rock inside the cage of the telehandler, which Webb and Russell attempted to clear, although as the blasts came closer, rock was dislodged faster than they could clear it. Russell recorded the date and time of each blast on his clothing, so if they died as a result of the blasting. Both Webb and Russell also wrote letters to their families on their clothing, the two men sang The Gambler by Kenny Rogers in order to keep up their spirits, as they waited for successive blasts to occur in the tunnel. At about 5. 45PM on 30 April two rescuers, Pat Ball the underground manager and Steve Saltmarsh, mine foreman, breached safety protocols by entering the 925 level, to the rockfall, Webb and Russell began yelling Were in here
37.
Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company
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Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company was a Tasmanian mining company formed on 29 March 1893, most commonly referred to as Mount Lyell. Mount Lyell was the dominant copper mining company of the West Coast from 1893 to 1994, following consolidation of leases and company assets at the beginning of the twentieth century, Mount Lyell was the major company for the communities of Queenstown, Strahan and Gormanston. It remained dominant until its closure in 1994, in the early stage of operations, Mount Lyell was surrounded by smaller competing leases and companies. Eventually they were all absorbed into Mount Lyell operations, or were closed down, as a consequence the Mount Lyell company had utilised considerable resources on maintaining leases over areas of promising geology - as well as checking older mining locations on the west coast. At various stages it also shared costs and resources with other companies who would assist by investing in exploration by becoming partners in some leases. West Lyell open cut which had been dominant in the 1950s was finished, on 29 March 1993 the company celebrated its centenary. At that stage it was known as the Copper Division of Renison Goldfields Consolidated Limited, the Mount Lyell Mining Field, and the various activities of the company in Queenstown and the west coast of Tasmania were celebrated throughout the community. It is estimated that 100 million tonnes of tailings were disposed of into the Queen River, the Mount Lyell lease and mine was reopened by Copper Mines of Tasmania in 1995. This company in turn was acquired by Sterlite Industries, an Indian-based company, as a consequence it is part of the Vedanta group of companies. Its concentrate material is shipped to India for processing, government guidelines saw tailings dams created and special measures taken to prevent any further pollution of the rivers and harbour. This railway was rebuilt and recommenced operation in 2002 as the Abt Wilderness Railway, also, due to circumstances at the winding up of Mount Lyell significant amounts of company records were deposited with Tasmanian state archives. Pollution of the Queen and King Rivers, and Macquarie Harbour was caused by the release of mine waste and it is estimated that 100 million tonnes of tailings were disposed of into the Queen River. Smelting ended in the 1960s and CMT has built a dam to contain tailings, within the lease site, the North Lyell Tunnel has water derived in part from underground workings and has approximately 78% of the lease site copper loading. Discharge from other tunnels and waste rock dumps accounts for 21%, the remaining 1% is from smaller sources. Contaminated sediments in the King River and Macquarie Harbour contribute relatively little of the pollutant load entering the harbour. Railways on the West Coast of Tasmania West Coast Tasmania Mines Vedanta Resources Atkinson, the Abt Railway and Railways of the Lyell region. Western Tasmania - A land of riches and beauty
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Tasmania
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Tasmania is an island state of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is located 240 km to the south of the Australian mainland, the state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands. The state has a population of around 519,100, just over forty percent of which resides in the Greater Hobart precinct, Tasmanias area is 68,401 km2, of which the main island covers 64,519 km2. Though an island state, due to an error the state shares a land border with Victoria at its northernmost terrestrial point, Boundary Islet. The Bishop and Clerk Islets, about 37 km south of Macquarie Island, are the southernmost terrestrial point of the state of Tasmania, the island is believed to have been occupied by Aboriginals for 40,000 years before British colonisation. It is thought Tasmanian Aboriginals were separated from the mainland Aboriginal groups about 10,000 years ago when the sea rose to form Bass Strait. The conflict, which peaked between 1825 and 1831 and led to more than three years of law, cost the lives of almost 1100 Aboriginals and settlers. The near-destruction of Tasmanias Aboriginal population has been described by historians as an act of genocide by the British. The island was part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1854 the present Constitution of Tasmania was passed and the year the state received permission to change its name to Tasmania. In 1901 it became a state through the process of the Federation of Australia, the state is named after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who made the first reported European sighting of the island on 24 November 1642. Tasman named the island Anthony van Diemens Land after his sponsor Anthony van Diemen, the name was later shortened to Van Diemens Land by the British. It was officially renamed Tasmania in honour of its first European discoverer on 1 January 1856, Tasmania was sometimes referred to as Dervon, as mentioned in the Jerilderie Letter written by the notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly in 1879. The colloquial expression for the state is Tassie, Tasmania is also colloquially shortened to Tas, especially when used in business names and website addresses. TAS is also the Australia Post abbreviation for the state, the reconstructed Palawa kani language name for Tasmania is Lutriwita. The island was adjoined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period about 10,000 years ago, much of the island is composed of Jurassic dolerite intrusions through other rock types, sometimes forming large columnar joints. Tasmania has the worlds largest areas of dolerite, with many distinctive mountains, the central plateau and the southeast portions of the island are mostly dolerite. Mount Wellington above Hobart is an example, showing distinct columns known as the Organ Pipes
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King River (Tasmania)
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The King River is a major perennial river in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia. Formed by the confluence of the Eldon and South Eldon rivers, the river descends 24 metres over its 52-kilometre course. The upper section of the lies in a glaciated valley. Also small glacial lakes occur on and north of Mount Sedgwick, Lake Beatrice for instance lies on the eastern slope of Mount Sedgwick. The upper portion of the King River valley was first surveyed for damming in 1917 by the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company. The river is impounded by the Crotty Dam to form Lake Burbury, covering 54 square kilometres over the valley and named after the first Australian born Governor of Tasmania. Water drawn from the lake is used to supply the conventional hydroelectric John Butters Power Station, the site of the townsite of Crotty, and the smelters of Crotty were also submerged. The King River was considered to be Australias most polluted river, Mining started in the 1880s, with the Queen River, a major tributary of the King River, being used for waste water disposal from the Mt Lyell copper mine. Between 1922 and 1995 low grade ore was concentrated on site, about 1.5 million tonnes of sulfidic tailings entered the river system each year up to 1995, along with huge volumes of acidic, metal-rich water flowing from the workings. This acid mine drainage is derived from water leaching through the exposed and oxidised sulfide rocks, when it was in operation, the fumes from the ore smelter produced acid rain which also leached minerals from the bare Queenstown hills. In 1992 the King River was dammed above the confluence with the Queen River to generate power at the Crotty Dam. This changed the regime in the King River, and affected the way tailings were transported through the river system. The tailings in the river greatly affect the water quality, about 100 million tonnes of tailings have been deposited on the banks and bed of the King River and in a delta at the mouth of the river where it enters Macquarie Harbour. Since the closure of the mine in late 1995, and the construction of a dam by the new operators. However, acid water continues to enter the river due to mine dewatering, the north bank of the lower portion of the King River valley was the route for the old Abt rack railway to Queenstown. In 1962 the original builder and owner, the Mount Lyell Mining and this has been since restored in early 2002 for tourism purposes. The new line follows exactly the route and is known as the West Coast Wilderness Railway. Western Tasmania - A land of riches and beauty
40.
Bougainville Island
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Bougainville Island is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville of Papua New Guinea. This region is known as Bougainville Province or the North Solomons. Its land area is 9,300 km2, the population of the province is 175,160, which includes the adjacent island of Buka and assorted outlying islands including the Carterets. Mount Balbi at 2,700 m is the highest point, although Bougainville Island is geographically part of the Solomon Islands archipelago, it is not a part of the state of Solomon Islands. Bougainville was first settled some 28,000 years ago, Three to four thousand years ago, Austronesian people arrived, bringing with them domesticated pigs, chickens, dogs and obsidian tools. The first European contact with Bougainville was in 1768, when the French explorer Louis de Bougainville arrived and named the island for himself. Germany laid claim to Bougainville in 1899, annexing it into German New Guinea, Christian missionaries arrived on the island in 1902. During World War I, Australia occupied German New Guinea, including Bougainville and it became part of the Australian Territory of New Guinea under a League of Nations mandate in 1920. In 1942, during World War II, Japan invaded the island, following the war, the Territory of New Guinea, including Bougainville, returned to Australian control. On 9 September 1975, the Parliament of Australia passed the Papua New Guinea Independence Act 1975, the Act set 16 September 1975 as date of independence and terminated all remaining sovereign and legislative powers of Australia over the territory. Bougainville was to part of an independent Papua New Guinea, however, on 11 September 1975, in a failed bid for self-determination. The republic failed to any international recognition, and a settlement was reached in August 1976. Bougainville was then absorbed politically into Papua New Guinea with increased self-governance powers, between 1988 and 1998, civil war on the island claimed over 15,000 lives. The Peace talks brokered by New Zealand began in 1997, leading to autonomy for the island, a multinational Peace Monitoring Group under Australian leadership was deployed. In 2001, a agreement was signed including promise of a referendum on independence from PNG. Bougainville is the largest island in the Solomon Islands archipelago and it is part of the Solomon Islands rain forests ecoregion. Bougainville and the island of Buka are a single landmass separated by a deep 300-metre-wide strait. The island is 9000 square kilometres, and there are several active, mount Bagana in the north central part of Bougainville is conspicuously active, spewing out smoke that is visible many kilometres distant
41.
Ok Tedi Mine
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Discharges from the mine have caused widespread and diverse harm, both environmentally and socially, to the 50,000 people who live in the 120 villages downstream of the mine. The mine is operated by Ok Tedi Mining Limited, which is majority-owned by the PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited, in 2013 it was nationalised by the Government of Papua New Guinea in controversial action. Prior to 2002, it was majority owned by BHP Billiton, located in a remote area of PNG, above 2,000 m on Mount Fubilan, in a region of high rainfall and frequent earthquakes, mine development posed serious challenges. The town of Tabubil was built to serve the mining operation, before mining operations, Mount Fubilan was described as a copper mountain with a gold cap. Exploratory drilling in the began in the 1970s, and was run by the Kennecott Copper Corporation. In the early 1980s, BHP secured a mining lease, in 1984, it began exploiting the gold cap by using cyanide extraction procedures. After the gold deposit was depleted, the company surveyed for mining the much larger copper deposit underneath, at that time, this deposit was believed to be the largest copper deposit in the world. BHP entered into a partnership with the Papua New Guinea government, Amoco Corporation, BHP maintained a majority share in the mine. Around 20 years after the beginning of mining operations, majority-share ownership was converted to the PNG Sustainable Development Program, all mining operations at Fubilan have had their headquarters based at Tabubil. The mine works as an open cut operation and Mount Fubilan has been reduced to a pit in the ground. By 31 December 2004,8,896,577 tonnes of copper concentrate had been mined, in addition, between 1985 and 1990,47.642 tonnes of gold bullion were produced. There is an adjacent to the mine that transforms the raw material mined into copper concentrate slurry. The mill operates two mills and one sag mill. Copper concentrate is produced as slurry and piped 137 km along the Kiunga-Tabubil Highway to Kiunga, the port of the district. The mine is powered by a power facility at Ok Menga. There are also backup diesel generators that are used if the flow from the Ok Menga river is not enough to generate sufficient electricity, the Kiunga-Tabubil Highway is maintained by Ok Tedi Mining Limited, as the mine is the greatest beneficiary of the road. The highway, for the most part, runs parallel with the Ok Tedi River, parts of the highway are often consumed by the river and need to be rebuilt. The cost of maintaining this road is K1.5 million a year, the copper slurry pipeline to Kiunga from the mine runs along the full length of this road
42.
Grasberg mine
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The Grasberg Mine is the largest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world. It is located in the province of Papua in Indonesia near Puncak Jaya, the government of Indonesia owns the remaining 9. 36% of PT Freeport Indonesia. FCX operates under an agreement with the government of Indonesia, which allows Freeport to conduct exploration, mining and production activities in a 27 and it also conducts exploration activities in an 413, 000-acre area. All of Freeports proven and probable reserves and current mining operations are located in Block A. The 2006 production was 610,800 tonnes of copper,58,474,392 grams of gold, in 1936, Dutch geologist Jean Jacques Dozy was a member of an expedition that scaled Mount Carstensz, the highest mountain in the Dutch East Indies. While there, he notes of a peculiar black rock with greenish coloring. In 1939, he filed a report about the Ertsberg and he was working for Nederlandsche Nieuw Guinea Petroleum Maatschappij, an exploration company formed by Shell in 1935, with 40% Standard Vacuum Oil Company interest and 20% Far Pacific investments. In March 1959 the New York Times published an article revealing the Dutch were searching for the source of alluvial gold which had been flowing into the Arafura Sea. Geologist Forbes Wilson, working for the Freeport mining company in August 1959 after reading Dozys 1936 report, in 1960 the expedition, led by Forbes Wilson and President of Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold-George Mealey, confirmed the huge copper deposits at the Ertsberg. It was financed by Freeport Sulphur, whose directors included Godfrey Rockefeller, Texaco chairman Augustus Long, George Mealey, and Robert Lovett. Built at 4,100 metres above sea level in one of West Papuas most remote areas, it involved a capital, construction cost was $US175 million, $US55 million above the original budget. A116 km road and pipeline, port, airstrip, power plant and it officially opened in 1973, and was expanded by Ertsberg East, which opened in 1981. Steep aerial tramways are used to transport equipment and people, ore is dropped 600 metres from the mine, concentrated and mixed with water to form a 60,40 slurry. The slurry is pumped through a 166 km pipeline through mountains, jungle and swamp to the port at Amamapare. Each tonne of dry concentrate contains 317 kilograms of copper,30 grams of gold and 30 grams of silver, in 1977 the rebel group Free Papua Movement attacked the mine. The group dynamited the main slurry pipe, which caused tens of millions of dollars in damage, the Indonesian military reacted harshly, killing at least 800 people. By the mid-1980s, the mine had been largely depleted. Freeport explored for other deposits in the area, in 1988, Freeport identified reserves valued at $40 billion at Grasberg, just 3 kilometres from the Ertsberg mine
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Porgera Gold Mine
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The Porgera Gold Mine is a large gold and silver mining operation in Enga province, Papua New Guinea, located at the head of the Porgera Valley. The mine is situated in the rain forest covered highlands at an altitude of 2,200 to 2,700 m, in a region of high rainfall, landslides, the Porgera Gold Mine is operated by the Porgera Joint Venture. It began production in 1990 and was developed and operated by Placer Dome which was acquired in 2006 by Barrick Gold, emperor Gold Mine, holding a minority stake of 20%, sold to Barrick in April 2007. This gave Barrick a 95% ownership of the operation, the remaining 5% is owned by Mineral Resources Enga, which is owned by the Enga Provincial Government, the Papua New Guinea National Government and Porgera Landowners. Porgera Gold Mine is the second largest mine in Papua New Guinea and is regarded as one of the top ten producing gold mines. In 2009 it produced 572,595 ounces of gold and 94,764 ounces of silver and had 2,500 employees and 500 contractors. Since it began operating, the mine has produced more than 16 million ounces of gold and almost 3 million ounces of silver, the mine′s proven and probable mineral reserves as of 2009 amount to 8.1 million ounces of gold. It has consistently been criticised for environmental and human rights issues, Porgera Gold Mine began operation in 1990. Originally an underground operation, open-pit mining became important after 1993. Since 2002 the mine utilises both open-pit and underground mining methods for ore extraction, the site of the current open pit is Mt Waruwari which is being excavated. The open pit mine moves about 160,000 tonnes of material and gold-bearing ore per day. Ore is processed in a conventional plant, utilising several SAG and Ball mills, four Autoclaves, floatation cells. Gravity recovery is used, Knelson concentrators doing the primary recovery. A large fleet of Cat 777 and Cat 789 trucks haul on the surface, fed by O&K shovels, a collection of underground development and production drilling equipment break ground, which is bogged by Elphinstone RH series LHDs into a fleet of Elphinstone AD45 trucks. The mine is nominally a joint venture, however it is managed by Barrick Gold personnel, as of July 2007, all departmental managers are of white extraction and are of non-PNG origin. None of the management team lives in the Porgera region, the mine has an extensive training and education program, and offers diverse traineeships and apprenticeships to local people. This has resulted in people gaining the necessary skills for employment at the Porgera mine and at other mining operations in Papua New Guinea. In 2009, out of a total of 2,427 employees at the mine,93. 49% were PNG nationals,1,606 were Porgerans,33 other Engans,630 other PNG nationals, and 158 were expatriates
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Lihir Island
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Lihir Island is the largest island in the Lihir group of islands,22 km long and 14.5 km wide, in Papua New Guineas New Ireland Province. It consists of a complex of several overlapping basaltic stratovolcanoes rising 700 m above sea level, while the volcanoes are not currently active, geothermal activity is still present. The island is in what was the forearc basin associated with the subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the North Bismarck Plate, subduction stopped about 10 million years ago with the collision of the Ontong Java plateau with the subduction zone. The island is located 900 km NE of Port Moresby, annual rainfall averages 4,800 mm, temperature ranges between 19 and 35 degrees Celsius. The population of the Lihir Group increased from 12,570 in 2000 to an estimated 18,000 in 2007, residents are of Melanesian descent and have predominantly a subsistence lifestyle. Lihirians follow traditional belief systems, although official records indicate that 99% of the PNG population are Christians. Most villages are located on the fringe, although it is thought that originally some villages were located inland but were moved to the coast at the encouragement of missionaries. The economic focal point of the island is the Ladolam Gold Mine, Ladolam represents one of the largest epithermal gold deposits in the world and it is hosted by high-potassic igneous rocks. The mine is operated by Newcrest Mining Limited, the mine holds one of the worlds largest gold resources. Grab samples from the submarine Conical Seamount, located about 8 km south of Lihir Island, the mine is located on a geothermically active area and to enable the mine to proceed, steam relief wells have been drilled to release subterranean pressure. The steam has, in part, been captured and is used to operate a 50 MW geothermal power station which generates approximately 25% of the power requirements. Mine tailings are discharged into the sea, the largest settlement on the Island is Londolovit, where most of the expatriate mine employees live. Basic shopping and health facilities are located there. The local hospital has inpatient and outpatient facilities and provides care services to both the expatriate and local communities. An airstrip large enough to land a jet is also located north of Londolovit. As is the case in tropical regions, mosquito-borne viruses are present on the island. Land ownership follows traditional models with land being owned by clans, insofar as it relates to land ownership, the society is matrilineal with land being passed though the female generations. The land cannot be sold, however, usage rights can be granted, list of volcanoes in Papua New Guinea Global Volcanism Program, Lihir Lihir mine information A Case Study on Indigenous People, Extractive Industries and the World Bank
. PMID 18335091.
