Mike Thornton "Mining Toxic Legacy"

When our guest speaker, Mike Thornton, went more in depth with the effects and the basics about mining put me into more of a panic because where I live. I live in Grass Valley and when he said that they were thinking about re-opening the mine off Idaho Maryland I was blown away. After all of the damage that mining does to the environment, our culture, and everyone’s health, I don’t understand how they could consider it. We have a wonderful area up here and would love to keep it that way but with a re-opening of a mine would only ruin that distant dream. The fact that throughout California there are 47,000 abandoned mines and 87 percent of them have present toxic hazards is a very unsettling feeling. On the other hand, I was fathomed by how much gold was still left in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and can’t blame those who are for re-opening of gold mines, but, with the price of gold lower then what it costs to extract it gives hope to those that just want to restore history for how it was. I was the most surprised to find out that they mined for mercury, which was a major reason for the contamination in the foothills, on the coast and transported it to mine for gold. So at the same time where destroying out mountain range we were impacting the coastal region for one cause. I enjoyed his lecture as well because it went more in depth to the effects on the environment and shed light on what we need to be aware of.