1. Mining!!! By Elyse “Cutie” Boileau

2. What is Mining? Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually (but not always) from an ore body, vein or (coal) seam Materials recovered by mining include coal, copper, gold, silver, diamonds, iron, lead, limestone, nickel, phosphate, and tin to just name a few Any material that cannot be grown from agricultural processes, or created artificially in a laboratory or factory, is usually mined

3. Why is Mining Important? -Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year. A television requires 35 different minerals; 40 minerals are used to make telephones and 15 minerals are needed to make a car.

4. Your telephone is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, limestone, silica, silver, talc and wollastonite. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Everything from the carpet (limestone, selenium, lime, soda ash, zeolites, bentonite, titanium, sulfur, diatomite) under your feet to the doorknob (iron) on your door comes from mining.

5. Underground Mining There's underground mining and surface strip mining. The safety issue is a big problem with underground mining. Underground mines also produce a significant amount of methane and particulate matter.

6. Surface Strip Mining Surface strip mining has significant ecological issues related to it. The strip mining rips out large areas of land for mining. Water is often contaminated in the area. Safety is not as large of an issue compared to underground mining though

7. Both types of mining use large pieces of equipment to transport coal, that either burn fuel, or use significant amounts of electricity. The carbon footprint of mining itself is huge. This is also not taking into account the carbon footprint of the power plants that burn all this coal, which is even more significant!

8. Galore Mine Collapse of Galore Mine project leaves transmission line in limbo Galore Creek in northwestern B.C is a world class copper-silver-gold deposit where NovaGold Canada announced on Feb.24 th /07 that they would start building an open pit mine there Unfortunately on Nov.28 th /07 the $40 million plan was put on hold

9. Galore Creek Mining Co. was supposed to put up to $158 million to get the transmission line started, but Galore principals Teck Cominco & NovaGold announced they were halting development of their northwest B.C mine project due to a stunning increase in development costs Northwest communties now rely on diesel generators to produce electricity Without Galore there wouldn’t be a customer for the large volume of power that the planned 247-kilovolt, 335 km line would bring into the area