TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH AN ABANDONNED MINEWatch your step! A problem within old mining districts

TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH AN ABANDONNED MINEWatch your step! A problem within old mining districts all over the globe are abandoned mine workings. Every year, hundreds of people injure themselves and several dozen die while “poking about” in retired mines. Dangers can include tumbling down unstable piles of tailings while rock climbing, taking a misstep into what turns out to be an old vertical shaft, drowning in the waters of what was an open pit, and asphyxiating within underground tunnels void of oxygen and heavy in toxic gasses. Hidden within bushes may be tunnel entrances now occupied by bears or wild boar. What can be done with these old mines? Modern legislation necessitates environmentally sound closure and reclamation, but mining has gone on for millennia. There are thousands of mines “off the books,” where no record remains who was responsible, what they were mining for, or the extent of the mine in the subsurface. Still, there are options for renewed uses and safety measures for these old workings, ten of which I highlight below:1. Grow things in them: The temperatures and humidity in most shallow underground mines make them ideal for growing mushrooms. Though lacking natural lighting, trials for growing biomass algae within underground mines have been suggested.2. Toss garbage into them: The immense depleted open pit mines for lignite in Ptolemaiida Greece have been made impermeable to groundwater circulation, and are now used as landfills for the entire region. Deep salt mines in Germany are used to store radioactive waste.3. Go fishing in them: Mine works frequently get drowned by groundwater. In some cases, this is the reason that a mine is abandoned in the first place. However, some old large open pits make great lakes, and many support healthy fish populations. 4. Make them into Archeological Parks: The Lavrion mines near Athens furnished the silver necessary to funding the richness of ancient Greece and several wars. This and other old mines around the world are museums of mining technology as well as social history featuring the lives of the miners and/or slaves who worked these ancient mines. The Bodie mine in California is one of several historical parks centered on the state’s mining legacy. 5. If the mines are underground and hazardous (such as many in the gold country of California), they often must be sealed with polyurethane foam to keep out “explorers” who might get trapped, die in cave-ins, or run out of air in airless tunnels. 6. Old underground mines are used by bats, owls, and other cave-dwelling species as habitats. In the case of bats, some mines are sealed off in such a way that the tunnels remain accessible to bats but not to humans. Bears have moved into old pre-WWII underground mines in Greece to hibernate during the winter.7. Use them as wine cellars. 8. The thermal conditions in underground mines are constant year round; depending on their depth and local heat flow, temperatures may be a steady 10C or a warm 30C. These temperatures could be “mined” for use in heating / cooling systems. 9. Use tunnels and mine workings for education of future mining geologists and engineers. The Colorado School of Mines operates The Edgar Mine as a teaching facility. The Polytechnic University of Athens, Greece, educates its students in the same mines that enriched ancient Athens, the Lavrion Silver Mines.10. Some mines themselves can be recycled for further mining. What is a “gangue” mineral (useless mineral found among useful ore minerals) or mine wastes in one century, may become valuable today with improvements in ore processing or the fluctuations in mineral prices. Annie RPhoto by Dina GhikasFor further research :http://www.conservation.ca.gov/omr/abandoned_mine_lands/AML_Report/Documents/volume1textonly.pdfhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8880965http://www.psmag.com/science-environment/the-salt-mine-solution-3797/http://www.metal.ntua.gr/index.pl/school_en#3300 http://www.mindat.org/loc-1942.htmlhttp://www.mindat.org/loc-1942.htmlhttp://mining.mines.edu/Mining-Edgar-Minehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=underground-algae-growth-light-emitting-diodeshttp://geology.com/articles/abandoned-mines.shtmlhttp://www.kepekozani.gr/program/reregions/a.pdfhttp://www.docstoc.com/docs/83195642/UTILIZATION-OF-MABE-ASBESTOS-MINE-AS-A-DISPOSAL-SITE-FOR-ASBESTOS-http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=509http://economie.moldova.org/news/cricova-the-largest-underground-wine-cellar-in-the-world-19083-eng.html -- source link

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