Home › Forums › 16 to 1 Mine › Water and Arsenic: which came first?
- AuthorPosts
I think today’s decisions were an affront to not only scientific principles but logical thought as well. The board decided to increase the amount of water sampling and reporting required when they cannot even maintain complete records of the data that the mine did submit over the past 13 years.
One good thing about the meeting was that it seemed to me that the board listened a bit more to our side, in stark contrast to the demeanor of the board back in 1997-1998.
Let’s look forward to a fourm in which the mine can finally receive a fair hearing and where hopefully logic and common sense will be afforded more weight.
Jason Burke
Try this one on for perspective:
Recent discoveries by the EPA revealed arsenic levels in Sacramento’s Curtis Rail Yard somewhere between 25,000 and 46,000 PPB, yet where do we read of the quantitative distinction in Sacramento’s major newspaper? Yes…last time I drove north on I5, the evidence of ‘clean-up’ shouts at you as you look east…and the site lies along the Sacramento River. The same River fed by Kanaka Creek. The same water ostensibly rendered ‘poisonous’ by leaky levels of arsenic delivered into the system by eons of natural erosion, 150 years ignored by the politically motivated environmental movement.
Let’s examine the relative publicity surrounding both the Curtis Rail Yard and the miniscule ‘green’ (as much as I abhore the term, but for the sake of clarification I use it for relative perspective to those who understand only rhetoric), yes ‘green’ mining techniques employed by the Sixteen to One:
Thousands of miles of track have been lain with ballast support utilizing arsenic-laden waste from copper-smelting, a common form of refinement throughout the world…tracks lining rights-of-way that often follow river courses, the most direct routes of commerce, the sources of vast tax revenues confiscated by governments throughout the country. 25,000 PPM vs. possible naturally occuring arsenic levels of 25 to 500 PPM in Kanaka Creek.
Which of these ‘atrocities’ has received the distinction from the press?
Right…The small, insignificant one with the most accessible political potential…
Well stated Rick!
Private property rights, of course, do not include the right to pollute another’s property, yet let’s examine the issue recently brought to light by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.
There are a number of things on the table, all in concert with each other. The formost: a non-elected board, appointed (politically motivated, of course) has redefined the definition of drinking water, redefined ‘primary use’ of water in Alleghany, redefined jurisdiction and redefined chemistry.
Arsenic is a natural element. Arsenopyrite is a naturally occurring ore: FeS2FeAs2 It happens to be associated with quartz deposites, specifically arsenopyrite, found in hard rock gold mines in California. The Sixteen to One has been told (through unchallenged regulation) to ‘clean-up’ arsenic dumping in Kanaka Creek, based on sampling of effluent discharge from 1999 when an entirely different set of circumstances existed: the mill was grinding up quartz with minute quantities of naturally occurring arsenopyrite (no longer running), samples taken ignored any dillution factor once added to the creek’s naturally flowing volume, ignored the subsequent downsteam water volume from tributaries, ignored the fact that no one uses Kanaka Creek water for drinking water, ignored the fact that for 150 years mines along Kanaka Creek encountered arsenopyrite, and ignored the fact that the primary use of the water isn’t defined as drinking water, anywhere from Alleghany to the Pacific Ocean.
I challenge anyone in the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to dip their mug into the Sacramento River and take a long drink. They won’t, because arsenic exists from manufactured agricultural pesticides…in far greater quantity than a trickle of naturally occurring water coming out of a two inch pipe from an operation that isn’t even operating!! Go figure.
What’s at stake here isn’t the health of those cited by the Water Board. Instead, what’s at stake is our sovereignty to retain jusrisdiction of regional water rights that predate the existence of today’s fear tactics, employed by the politically motivated environmental movement playing God.
Guess what? Water and arsenic were here billions of years before someone invented the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.
- AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.