Warner
Pacific College
October
24, 2011
THE UNITED STATES BUREAU of LAND
MANAGEMENT and COAL
The
United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a government agency that
regulates the management of public land throughout the United States. The total
area of this land comes out to be about 253 million acres which is
approximately 1/8 of the total area of the United States ("Bureau of land," ).
The majority of public land is in the western portion of the United States and
an even larger portion can be found in Alaska. In addition to the public land
that the BLM oversees they are also in charge of 700 million acres of
subsurface mineral real estate underlying federal and private lands ("Bureau of land," ). The BLM has a myriad of
responsibilities pertaining to rules or regulations that oversee recreational
activities such as camping, hunting, fishing, driving vehicles off-road, boating,
hiking, shooting, and even hang-gliding. Aside from recreational activities,
the land that the BLM issues for industrial uses is also governed by the BLM.
The major industries that apply for these land grants are primarily mining and
lumber companies ("Bureau
of land," ).
As
stated earlier the BLM issues land to mining and timber companies to fuel
America’s manufacturing and energy industries. I have a few complaints about
the timber industry but my major complaint is with America’s mining companies
and their generally accepted practices. To begin, mining itself has a devastating
impact on the ecosystem around mines and also on the human population drawing
water from the water table feeding the mine. When they begin digging the mine,
high concentrations of methane gas, the most common from of green house gas, is
released into the atmosphere ("Environmental
impacts of," 2011). Methane is a natural byproduct of the formation
of coal ("Environmental
impacts of,"). In the United States 67% of the mining done is
referred to as strip mining, cut mining, or pit mining; literally, it is a
giant pit in the ground and coal is extracted via heavy equipment ("Environmental impacts
of," ). This allows for more coal to be recovered then conventional
underground mining but also has a greater impact on the environment.
A major byproduct of
coal is pyrite (iron sulfide) or fool’s gold. This composition is acidic in
nature and when rain falls the rain waters wash over the pyrite and take their
acidic qualities to nearby streams or seep into the ground and contaminate the
water table. This process is referred to as acid mine drainage (AMD) and is a
problem coal mining operations are trying to solve but are having little
success ("Environmental
impacts of," ).
Another problem
that coal mines create but do not deal is overburden or waste rock. This material
is the worthless rock and sediment that sit atop the precious coal and
typically is left in mountain sized mounds around the mine. This may not seem
like a major problem however these piles are extremely unstable and
continuously shift and have frequent land slides. In addition to the danger
posed to humans, these waste piles attract and soak up heat like a sponge and
as a result create very difficult living conditions for the indigenous plant
species. However, the benefit of this uneconomical pile is that mining
companies can use this material to restock mines and return the landscape to a
shade of what it once was.
To
summarize, the BLM allows the mining industry to establish mining operations
all over the United States for pennies. The Mining Act of 1872 allows companies
to buy an acre of land for five dollars. This allows mining companies to buy
massive tracts of land and devastate the landscape which will take decades to
recover.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2) Environmental impacts of coal
power:. (n.d.).
Retrieved from http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html
3) Environmental impacts of coal power:. (2011, may 25). Retrieved from
http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=environment_Where Greenhouse
Gases Come From
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