Gaea is bleeding.
In Alentejo, southern Some three thousand years ago this town was famed by its gold mines. But the gold mines were in a sacred forest, only the priests could go in, so only they could mine.
Then came the Romans. A greedy bunch they were. They made bigger mines, in this pictures you can see some holes. Those holes are roman gold mines.
Foi-se o ouro foram-se os romanos. Gone the gold gone the romans, that means.
Yes, the gold was gone, but there were still other metals, the place was mined mostly in a huge open sky mine until modern days, until exhaustion.
Well, gone the profit gone the care. Where hundreds of years ago you could see a forest you now have this.
What was once an open sky mine is now a big hole filled with rain water. But that rain water ‘washes’ through the wastes and it carries sulphur and iron down plus other substances.
This ‘lake’ reeks like rotten eggs. Anyone falling in would find out the hard way it is extremely acid.
The color of the water may seem blue if seen from far, the suspended iron adds a reflective coating that mirrors the big blue sky. As you get closer to the water though the harsh reality becomes clearer: red water. Blood red water. Like a country bleeding due to the greed of men.
Oh, just across the hill you have a great dam, a river beach, camping grounds, hotel. Beautiful place for some vacation.
But if you go there beware not to drink tap water, not to eat food cooked with tap water, not to use ice made from tap water.
The red water is poisoning the water people drink there.
The mine is fighting back, some say. Accepting the high rate of health problems the locals have as a punishment for centuries of greedy mining.
This is also another one of the shames about being Portuguese: scientists, local authorities, central government… they all know about the problem with the red water, with the aquifers contamination. But it is too expensive to do something about it, so they turn a blind eye on the problem.
This post was inspired by this picture posted by Shyha.
posted by DCveR at 9:48 AM
11 Comments:
Mining like this is really a disgrace. The States are full of places that are destroyed like this from irresponsible mining. And poisoned too because they used cyanide to get the gold out of the earth.
Sad that the earth is trashed irrevocably like this due to greedy people. There must be ways to mine responsibly, but I suppose they cost more than just killing the environment.
It does seem permanent, doesn't it?
It only seems permanent because of the cost of cleaning the place. Technically it is possible to recover that place.
I believe - not. Earth will eventually balance itself. There are just two problems - people and time.
And btw. people are the same everywhere...
Dcver, when I see and hear about mining like this, I feel a deep, deep sorrow. We are raping the earth. Abusing this precious gift.
I feel a tiny spark of hope when you say the place can be recovered. Can't citizens rally around to get it done? What do the journalists say? How about the green peace people?
I saw them recover mined land in Jamaica, where bauxite was mined. The place is now breath-taking, with grass replanted, trees, cows grazing. I believe it was Americans who mined and replanted.
Yes Shyha, people are the same everywhere. In Brazil they are cutting down the rainforests.
shyha: Nature can heal itself given enough time, but that means usually a lot longer than the time it took to produce the damage. This damage is being done for at least 2000 years. Also keep in mind the Sahara: centuries of forced grazing and cow stomping made it desert, nature plays the cards it gets, the Sahara will not have forests again, instead it will grow as a desert.
GG: Media is now focused on Rita. Next it will focus on whatever has flashy and gory images and preferably lots of crying victims. The locals have always lived with the old mines there, they used to live from the mines, they simply take it as punishment. The authorities prefer to invest in tourism and ignore the main problem. NGOs like Greenpeace can’t really do anything. Although technically possible to clean the place it would mean an investment far beyond reasonable by now. Some things are being done however, but it will take almost as long as a ‘natural recovery’.
your portugese engineers are like the blind following the blind
one of george bush's first innovations was to legalize poisoned water
that's really so very sad. but fascinating as well. i learn so much here. i hope that the media attention shames the government into acting. too bad it usually has to come to that in order for governments to ever do anything!
tristan: I wouldn’t blame it on the engineers. When the damage was done the knowledge on environmental issues was less. These open sky mines have been working until the 1880s, back then they didn’t know better. The acid lagoon with its pH about 2 has been there ever since, so the contamination has spread since the XIX century.
Another underground mine has been working until 1966, but they didn’t take care of the problem either because from what they saw at the time the lagoon was not contaminating the aquifers. There is no knowing whether back then that was true, now it isn’t.
Nowadays there is still a big difference between knowing how something can be achieved and having the means to do it. But at least the population is now aware of the dangers and the poisoned water is not legal here.
bees knees: Things got to a point that even the government can’t afford to clean the place in a short period of time. The media don’t worry about this, it doesn’t sell newspapers and it doesn’t increase shares.
You fixed the "its!"
tall glass: Sad to say it seems the rest of nature would in fact be much better off without us humans.
kris: Of course I did, and again I thank you for pointing out my mistake. Yet you’ll probably be seeing the same mistake here soon… :-(
First of all thank you for giving it some thought and for remembering this post. Thank you also for the link, that site is most interesting. Some of the processes they are using have also been tried in São Domingos to some extent, but there are differences between the two cases that amount to two very different scenarios. The mine they are treating is the less damaged in that area of Pennsylvania, that one has a manageable amount of waste, all other mines have higher levels and they can't expect to treat them this way, this is typical for 'natural' treatment methods and applies here too. But the main difference and problem is that in this project you showed me they have a superficial water problem, but they have a superficial water flow, thus they are able to have treatment ponds. Here there is no surface flow. The AMD has been soaking into the ground for over 2000 years with a huge increase in the XIX century with the industrial age. Each rainfall in spreads downwards into the aquifers. Imagine a pyramide with a glass cup on its top. That glass cup would be the acid pond in these photos, the pyramide is the contamination 'plumme'. That pyramid is so big its interior is crossed by large underground 'rivers'. The only way to treat all this waste would be to move it from here and displace it in treatment ponds elsewhere like the ones described on that site, but the amount of soil involved is not manageable and also it would mean having a huge area and a huge amount of surface water to use as treatment facility for many years.
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