An advertising billboard recently featured a picture of a muddied 4-wheel drive vehicle that had been put through its off-the-road paces. The caption read: “A face only a mudder could love.” Which was a cute play on words and a specific case of the more general saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” At the recent official opening of Corona Corp.’s Santa Fe mine near Hawthorne, Nev., more than one person commented that the operation seemed so immaculate, so neatly ordered: the precisely stacked piles of crushed rock; the ponds below them, blue and symmetrical; the mill building, freshly clad, gleaming in the Nevada sun. Even the contours of the open pit had esthetic appeal. (Probably, only people involved in mining could appreciate that last bit.)
But the true beauty of this and most other heap leach operations is that they can claim virtually pollution-free mining and milling. Granted, some environmentalists might become irate at the deep pit that will puncture the landscape after the loaders and haul trucks have gone. But I doubt it. Nevada is one immense, sparsely-populated expanse of sagebrush valleys and mountains. It is not a wilderness preserve like Vancouver Island’s Strathcona Park, over which environmentalists and mining companies recently warred.
More to the point, though, during the life of the Santa Fe operation neither airborne nor water-carried effluents should escape. Under the leach pads is a thick polyethylene liner that channels the gold-bearing solution into a collecting pond. The pregnant solution is pumped into the carbon columns in the mill. At the business end, gold and silver are produced, and the waste water, with traces of gold and cyanide, is recycled on to the pads again. A completely closed system. No smelter emissions, no slag, no tailing ponds; in short, nothing that should upset anyone.
This is mining at its best. Canada’s hard rock miners must continue striving for this in our own part of the world because environmental concerns can’t be ignored any longer. It also measures up beautifully against the recommendations of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the so-called Brundtland Report). In essence, the report calls for “environmentally sound” economic development.
Indeed, heap leaching is a face of mining that can be tolerated (if not loved) even by environmentalists.”
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