Adam Weaver
Bio280
Ecosystems and Economics
08/04/13

The Human impact on any ecosystem is usually a negative impact. When I think about the situations that surround our influence on ecosystems the most poignant example that comes to mind is that of the strip mining industry. In this industry we see the largest amount of economic gain go head to head with the worst ecologic destruction. I grew up in West Virginia where mining was a way of life and the local economies still bend to whims of the coal mining industry. Today I live in South Dakota, home of the Homestake Mine, the longest running gold mine in the country which is almost 8,000 feet deep. (Homestake,2013)
Coal mining is billion dollar industry here in the United States and the economic upside of it is hard to deny. Whole towns are still in existence due to the support that coal brings to their economies. Mining traditionally however brings many problems with it. Mining in general is associated with the following ecological problems: Saltiness, aridity and scarcity of water caused by the waste of enormous amounts of fresh water during the extraction process, heavy metals which are liberated and migrate into the ecosystem, the dislocation of thousands of tons of ore causes for sedimentation in rivers and susceptibility to both geologic and water erosion, migration of highly toxic cyanide into the subsoil and surface waters as well as the whole ecosystem, and acid drainage. (Shipirt, 2006) Finally, and most importantly all of these items lead to habitat loss which is perhaps the biggest threat in terms of conservation biology. Once a mountain top is removed, a stream full of acid, or a forest gone, the organisms that lived there usually can’t just find somewhere else to survive and they disappear.
The coal mining industry has however started to see the flip side of the economic coin since the regulations for mine reclamation were enacted in the 1970s and further strengthened in the 1990s. Today we see millions of dollars being spent to put these ecosystems back together and clean bodies of water so that they can once again support life. In the community that I grew up in they reconstructed a 300 acre wetland during this process. Perhaps more importantly, these expenditures are causing mining practices to change. It was common occurrence that “mountaintop removal” was the most cost effective way in the Appalachians, but because the ecologic cost now has an economic impact the coal companies are finding better ways. The Homestake mine that I mentioned earlier is an example of this, in the 1990s they started a 100 million dollar project to clean tailings and heavy metals out of the local streams around the mine. The mine is now no longer active because increased cost of mining due to basically having to clean up after yourself. (Homestake, 2013)
I believe that although I think mining is a inherently destructive project for plants, animals, and the natural geology of a region the process has seen vast improvement in recent years. This improvement can be completely attributed to the government regulations forcing them to replace the areas they destroy. Because it is much more inexpensive to not disturb an area than it is to rebuild it, these companies have seen it more and more economically viable to be as friendly to the local ecosystems as possible.

References

Encyclopedia of the Great Plains | HOMESTAKE MINE. (n.d.). Plains Humanities Alliance | Center for Great Plains Studies | University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Retrieved August 4, 2013, from http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ind.028.xml

Shpirt, M., & Rainbow, A. K. (2006). Ecological problems caused by coal mining and processing with suggestions for remediation. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Millpress.