9/24/22

Gila National Forest at risk to Canadian miners

The US Forest Service is often powerless to stop the extractive industry from permanently altering sensitive watersheds because of the General Mining Law of 1872. Repeal or even reform of the 1872 statute has been thwarted repeatedly by the earth hating Republican Party. 

Surface mines in SE Arizona owned by Morenci and Miami are despoiling watersheds and reducing entire mountain ranges to piles of waste rock. Silver City, New Mexico became a quieter town after strip mines there came to a grinding halt during the Trump slump and just like during the last Great Depression Democrats led the way to financial help for workers. 

But, about seventy five miles northwest of Silver City another Canadian miner wants to plunder Mexican spotted owl habitat within the Gila National Forest in the Mogollon mining district—named for a military officer appointed governor by the Spanish crown.
William Tooahyaysay Bradford serves as Ikegee Nant’an, or vice chief, and beh goz ani, or attorney general, for the Chiricahua Apache Nation. He said his people have been fighting against mining since the 1700s when the Spanish brought it to the area. Additionally, opponents to Summa Silver’s plan point to the proximity of the mining claims to the nation’s oldest designated wilderness area—the Gila Wilderness. Bradford said the Chiricahua creation story centers the area where the mining claim is located. It was there, he said, that coyote, a trickster and joker, created perpetual darkness. [Advocates say new mining claim near Mogollon threatens ecosystem and sacred sites]
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2 comments:

All Mammal said...

It would make way more sense to me to mine all the past and present landfills for metals and alloys and other elements. If that was implemented, we would never need to bore or blast into the Good Earth again. It would save on every cost attributed to mining. Not just monetary.
It wouldn’t take poisoning more water with cyanide or other nasty in-situ chemicals. The good stuff in the trash heap is already separated from the raw ore so there’s no need to go yanking out more.
And I bet you’d even pull out cold, hard cash from the heaps of rubbish. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? All kinds of coins must be just collecting new strains of MRSA in there. I bet there’s new bikes too. Ok, I can’t get anywhere near mountains of discarded treasure any more. But in my defense of dumpster diving I have found diamond earrings, $10 silver note from the 1930’s, a polaroid of Selena on stage at her Astrodome concert in her famous purple bellbottom romper, beautiful shell brooch, about 6 pairs of old coke bottle glasses with nice lenses you could use for all kinds of crafty contraptions, nice skis with matching poles. and....so..much..must....have..stuff

September 29, 2022 at 12:21 AM
larry kurtz said...

The guy who works on our windmill is a crazy Trumper who complains he can't buy American steel for well casings since it all comes from India and China but the one thing we agreed on is exactly that: all the best metal is indeed buried in landfills. Santa Fe County ships nearly all the plastic and steel harvested from the municipal waste stream to Colorado where Denver and Boulder are among the best cities for doing recycling right.

September 29, 2022 at 4:43 AM

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