Modern-day gold rush threatens Grand Canyon

[The Sushi Bandit]

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12505-modernday-gold-rush-threatens-grand-canyon.html

Some of the most beautiful national parks in the US are threatened by a mining boom prompted by soaring metal prices, according to an analysis of government data. Areas surrounding iconic locations in the western US such as Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon risk being intensively mined in coming years, says the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit research organisation based in Washington DC.

Its study draws on data from the government’s Bureau of Land Management to identify 2900 new mining claims that have been staked within five miles of national parks since 2003. "This is a modern-day land rush," says Dusty Horwitt, one of the report’s authors.

Mining is prohibited within national parks, but Horwitt says nearby activity can damage ecosystems inside the protected areas. At Bingham mine in Utah, for example, sulphates and heavy metals have escaped and now pollute 72 square miles of groundwater. Mining companies also use cyanide to extract metals such as gold from rocks and this has been known to leak into nearby watercourses.

[pansypoo53219]

1. oh that's smart

and in a place with little water to start. BRILLIANT!

[tom_paine]

2. This is so typically Imperial Amerika. Only Liberal Weaklings protect the environment.

Oh yes, if Amerika continues and finishes the transition which is now 30-40% complete from Liberty to New Totalitarian Tyranny, our environment is so fucked.

Look at Commie China or Soviet Russia or just about any Third World Nation with Big Extraction Industries if you want to know what the polluted landscape of Imperial Amerika will look like a century from today, if the transition remains unreversed or proceeds forward.

In the end, Bushies respect natural beauty for it's own sake no more than the Nazis they have patterned themselves after (in all areas save violence and overt rascism, Thank God for now).

So it does not surprise me a whit.