As far as mining goes, Corporate America made the decisions on where to mine based on cost and the lack of environmental standards. We can mine for those materials in this country, but it's the corporate structure that makes it less profitable, and therefore not happening
Or maybe its the 15-20 years it takes to get all the permits, perform the studies and have as much "proof" as required that we meet the highest environmental standards. After you spend 100s of millions or a billion dollars, you find out that the government influenced by a bunch of NIMBYs doesn't really want the mine anyway, even though they have jumped through every hoop they required and then some. Who TF would invest in something like that?
I'm all for mining, but it has to be done in a manner that doesn't pollute our waters, our lands and our air. There has to be real and draconian penalties in place for breaking those laws.
Please state the mines you support.
Do you support Black Butte Copper? Do you support Pebble? Do you support Twin Metals? Do you support Resolution Copper? Every one of those projects prepared all the necessary documents to secure permits, as required by law and regulation yet have been denied for some NIMBY reason or another. Set the goal posts, then move them. There is always a special reason, always... These mines would replace reserves that are currently being mined, yet won't be built. Current reserves in the US are less than 40 years at current use. The reserves will continue to decline unless new projects come on line, and we will rely more and more on other countries for supply. China controls 75% of refined copper right now, we need to be their friend or figure something out... Once peoples minds are made up, there is no changing them about projects. Billions of dollars have been spent, and nothing to show for it, and likely never will be. Who would invest in a project in the US that will never be constructed for some NIMBY or another? Yet you blame "Corporate America?" I love that analogy as well, especially coming from people who own stocks. We are all Corporate America, like it or not.
People think mining companies are owned by Dr. Evil or something.
Here's an example of looking the other way with clean water. An estimated 30% of the ~20k municipal water treatment plants (WTP) in the US do not meat US EPA water quality standards for their effluent discharge. I've seen estimates that are even higher... There is a plant here in Alaska that requires
300 square miles of ocean dilution to meet WQ standards for one particular constituent. All those WTPs get a waiver for one reason or another from the EPA. An estimated 30B gallons per day is discharged from those plants every day. Somewhere between 10-12Billion gallons of water is discharged into WOTUS every day that does not meet clean water standards. Where's the outrage? Where is the draconian legislature to make them pay? I'll tell you where it is... In order for most of those plants to be in compliance, it would require fees be increased 3-10x over what is paid now. The water that runs off your lawn is doubtful would meet clean water standards if measured especially if you use fertilizer or live in a large city with air quality issues (p.s. cars are the biggest offenders of air quality). Runoff from your driveway? Zero percent chance it meets WQ standards. Its easy to point the finger, but much harder to accept the fact that we are all contributing to pollution in aggregate, orders of magnitude above what any mine would produce. An estimated 70-80% of water bodies in the US exceed WQ standards... but mining is the bad guy. hahaha
The EPA and bureau of mines has spent a lot of time looking for and inventorying abandoned mines/mine water discharges. These include historic mine diggings in the middle of no where, and classify water running off waste rock piles into streams as "impacted" because there was past mining activity. Never mind they don't have any baseline data prior to the mine to know what is was prior. Even after all that, EPA has estimated around 50 Million gpd of water going untreated and exceeding WQ standards (that equals 0.5% of the effluent from WTPs who exceed WQ standards). Also keep in mind that is only from water treatment plants and it doesn't include the runoff from storm water from municipal lands, of which almost all exceeds WQ standards. What I'm getting at, is mine runoff does not even register on the radar for constituent loading in our waters, but is an easy target. Mines are the NR tag holders.
Lots of things changed after the CWA was passed. Many people believe water leaving a mine is still "bad" even though it meets WQ standards, and they rarely get waives like municipal WTPs. Untreated mine waste/runoff is benign compared to municipal water effluent. The water that comes from municipal WTPs has all sorts of weird organic and synthetic chemicals in it, which can't be treated at any cost effective approach (Corporate America or government causing that one?). God knows how long it will last in the environment. People get wrapped around the axle about a little acid mine water, that for the most part is very easily contained, classified and treated. Where as, municipal water can't be effectively treated for all the chemicals and other weird chit, so the EPA grants waivers. Could you imagine if they granted a waiver to a mine? People would lose their minds. That is if they can even get a permit to mine.
China will dominate the worlds commodities in my kids lifetime. They're almost there. They have a plan and have been executing it for decades. Just because a mine is in the US doesn't mean we keep the product that comes out of the ground.
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