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Miners WISH they had deposits the size of the grand canyon.
Imagine the tailings storage facility, lmao. I know, it's the Great Salt Lake! That explains the high metal content from the windblown sands as it dries out
Don't give them ideas.
Or actually, do. It creates more fodder for the community.
I heard an ancient order extracted the copper from the Grand Canyon in 1645, but there was nowhere to store that much. So they buried it in what we call "copper mines" all over the world. Using forgotten old world technology. Really these are just ancient caches to keep the copper market under control. The order would unearth new caches every few years. All this was discovered by our founding fathers and the locations were recorded in the declaration of independence by Benjamin Franklin. The secret was well kept for years and only shared only within the elite order of Free Masons, called the The Coppers. Just to distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
They keep trying to tell me that Lemmy isn't reddit...
The tailings pile would have snow caps.
Or take up several valleys.
Or be kilometers in size and 30 m high
Or make me want to throw up.
You can reclaim TSFs, though. It is certainly not easy, but it is doable.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YpF-SE3AwEo
This rec is coming up on 15 years old, and is the top of the TSF. The sides of it date to the 90s or earlier, and look pretty good. Trees were about 20 ft or more tall on the sides the last time I was there. The top is shoulder height.
The primary issues related to the cost of placing a cover that is thick enough to entomb the tailings (assuming they have metal leaching potential) that plant roots won't compromise. The other problem is geotechnical stability issues if you use trees to revegetate, as their roots can go deeper or you get blow down that creates a hole in the reclamation cover, creating an erosion channel over time.
That's video made me want to throw up also. It's the unnatural hole in the ground, what was taken out, and where it is now.
Digging is fun. If I had more money, I might hire a fleet of trucks and dig a big hole just cause. Did it as a kid in the sandbox, why not as an adult? And, if you fill it back up nice and smooth it out, it's like it was never there. But if you take out all the carbon, and send it off to be burned, does it really matter an iota of fuck if they plant some trees after?
I mean I guess fixing the landscape is better than leaving a big hole in the ground. Should have just left it alone.
Oh I'm with you on the prevention side; especially with oil sands - it's a marginal product at best with huge env. Damage.
For reference, they don't backfill because it's stupid expensive and the operation wouldn't be profitable. You would also likely have major subsidence issues.