The Pollution from Mining - Assignment Example

OF The Pollution from Mining and Managing the Waste is an Unsustainable Without Innovative Solutions. A brilliant, thought provoking and deeply profound article regarding coal mining in Mentougou district of Beijing, China, should lead any objective scientist to conclude that mining operations and managing the waste generated is an unsustainable activity going forward, unless innovative approach and models can be developed. According to Li et al (2011), Mentougou is a mountainous region in Beijing China which covers approximately 1453 Km, has a population of 236,000 people in 2006, an annual rainfall of 563mm, and has been mined for coal for over fifty years (Li, et al, 2011). The coal mining and the waste generated from it has caused some ecological and environmental problems, and has affected the sustainable development of the Beijing area of the country. A look at the impact of the human activities according to Li, et al (2011), will provide a window into to how cost and benefits can be determined and quantified, to ensure the indirect economic value of the activity as well as the ecosystem services activity can be accurately compared. Li et al (2011), found the indirect economic value of the mining activity after 50 years was $870m, while the ecosystem services activity reached a staggering $2001m, leaving a deficit of $1153m (Li, et al 2011). The Chinese government authority with the responsibility for coal mining, has since this report closed down certain areas of the district, to prevent further damage to the environment, but this is a reflection of the poor management of the waste generated from fifty years of activity, that has led to destruction of farm lands, damage to the plant life, contamination of the underground water, and the creation of millions of gallons of sludge. The operators in the area as well as the government, over the 50 year period, had used very cheap labor to extracted 0.15 billion tons of coal at a cost of $38.80 and market value of $44.00/ton, to generating an economic value of $870 million, but in the process have destroyed of land surface, formed of sink areas, removed of soil and water, according to information obtained from the National Third Soil Erosion (Li et al 2011). The ecosystem services cost due to the production of this quantity of coal, exceeded the economic value of the coal by 220.09%, and reflected how unsustainable the mining of the product, as well as the managing of the waste generated has been after nearly half of a century. The opportunity cost of the of land destroyed and the of soil and water loss, in terms of their use for farming and assistance in maintaining the ecosystem, were also not been included in the model, and will never be recovered, but will only increase as long as mining continues in the area. Li et al (2011), gave a glimpse of the magnitude of the cost, when they report that the mining activity has reduced lands that would be available for farming, polluted the environment, and during accidents, caused losses in mud rock flow as well as reduce the revenues that could have been earned had production not disrupted (Li et al 2011). China has 24, 0000 coal mines, and although it plans to reduce 4,000 of them annually, it has low grave resource rate of recovery of the waste generated (Space Daily. 2005). According to Space Daily (2005), the rate of recovery is 10-15%, and if Mentougou is a microcosm of the entire country’s coal industry then the possibility of maintaining sustainability will be extremely low especially in terms of waste management. The lack of environmental management control was exposed globally, when the high levels of fog caused by the presence of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and other greenhouse gasses in the city of Beijing and other cities, caused athletes of several countries to expressing reservations about attending the event. According to World Coal Association (2011), in 2009 China was the largest producer of coal with 2971 Mt, which was more than thrice the 917Mt extracted from the land by the United States of America, but exports only 16% of it which makes it’s consumption a minimum of 24954 Mt (World Coal Association, 2011). According to Hook (2007) however, China has been a net importer of coal and its consumption in 2006 corresponds to Kg of carbon dioxide, which is three times more than the carbon dioxide emissions from world diesel consumption, and the equivalent for natural gas; using BP conversion factor (Hook, 2007). The amount of carbon dioxide waste generated from mining and burning coal as a fuel was beyond the Chinese government capability to manage, and points to the unsustainability of the process. This is disappointingly so, because China has been able in its command economy, to pay the workers low rates, and ignore the safety and health requirement, but has not been able to develop the technology necessary to reduce the rising environment and ecological waste emanating from its reliance on coal as fuel to drive its industry. In applying the model developed by Li et al (2011), and using Mentougou representative of the entire country, since the mode of operation has been basically the same, the formula, V= (P-C)Q to determine the economic value of the coal mining in China(li, et al, 2011). P in the equation will represent the market value of the coal on the world market ($44.4/ton, C will be the estimated cost to produce a ton of the product, excluding all the variables relevant to environmental and ecological losses($38.8/ton), and Q is the quantity of coal produce over 50 years (0.15bt) V= (44.4-48.8) =$870 m In the model developed by Li et al (2011), the ecological services activities as a result of the coal mining had a 2.297 to 1 ratio with the indirect economic value generated from the coal production. This would make the cost $2001m, and the deficit which is a demonstration of the lack of sustainability of the operation was ($870m-$2001m) $1131m. This means it had cost the Mentougou coal mining company over the fifty year period -$1131m for the 1.5 billion tons of coal that it had produced, and the lost has been reflected in the damage done to the environment, as well as health of the local district. The rate of conversion of mined waste from the operation, assuming the country’s conversion rate standard will remain 10-15%, means it will take several years to correct the problem, and the country does not have the appropriate technology in place to reverse the process fast enough. In applying this formula for China annual national production, the indirect cost of coal mining production would be (ceteris paribus), V= (44.4-38.6)2971=$17231.8 m Using the 2.209 ratio developed between the indirect economic resource value and the ecological services, the cost will be (2.209* 17231.8) a staggering $39514.4m, and a deficit of -$ 223406.4m. This means that for the foreseeable future, coal mining will be an unsustainable activity in China, because for every year the 2971 million tons or more that it consumes, it will be incurring a loss of $223406.4 m. Managing mined waste in the form of carbon dioxide generated from natural gas, coal mining, and other forms are being met by the development of a broad based greenhouse gas reduction measure that include the use of renewable energy sources, and nuclear energy, and the use of a Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, according Suebsrisi and Wilson (2011). However, a major disadvantage of the program is that if it achieves the targeted 19 % carbon dioxide emission reduction established by The International Energy Agency (IEA), the fossil fuel plants will experience reductions in efficiency levels, and may have to turn to coal burning power plants to supplement the shortfall (Suebsrisi and Wilson, 2011). This would be regarded as a retrograde step, as the coal mining and burning operating lives of many companies would have been further extended. Additionally, in the application of CCS according to Suebsrisi and Wilson (2011), there will be need for construction and replacement of power plants to compensate for the losses of electricity on the grid, increase in emissions and waste generations in transporting the CCS equipment, as well as increase energy use and other resource consumptions (Suebsrisi, Wilson, 2011). He and Yin (2010), had their perspectives on the Mentougou operations, and how the management of waste that has been generated had impacted on the environment, when they research on the temporary and spatial evolution of land cover change and its effects through the integration of GIS Techniques, laboratory experiments, field surveys, and automatic extracting information on land change from remotely sensed data during a 16 year period beginning in 1988 (He, F., Yin, J., 2011). The results obtained indicated that it was the exploitation of the coal resources that brought about the significant changes in the original use of the land, as well as a series of environmental problems. The particular problems that highlighted the difficulty of managing the waste generated were the immediate reductions in rainfall in the area as a result of the greenhouse gases heat exchanges in the atmosphere, and pollution from heavy metals such as Cr and Pb in the surface and ground water (Hi, f., Yin, J. 2011). Innovation to the mining and management of waste in the environment, was brought to the fore by Boyer and Wratten (2009), who recommended after their research work in the field, that earthworms can bring the soil change desired all over the world, where the ecosystems are being damaged by such activities ( Boyer, Wratten, 2010). The use of earthworms on mined lands they contended can provide several ecosystem services that are likely to accelerate soil restoration, improve primary production, and facilitate the restoration of functional ecosystems in mining areas (Boyer, Wratten, 2010). The services offered according to Boyer and Wratten (2009), include increasing top soil fertility, provision of food for a wide range of predators, and the recycling of waste organic material from rehabilitated areas (Boyer, Wratten, 2010). Similarly, Edwards and Bohlin (1996) have used earthworms as a methodology to effect management of waste generated from mining activities, and reported that they play a significant role in the comminution and mineralization of organic matter, and greatly influence soil structure and chemistry, and are likely to accelerate soil restoration and improve primary production (Edwards, Bohlin, 1996). The use of organic waste such as sewage sludge to spread on to mine re-spread soil was also highly recommended by Emmerling and Paulsch (2001) as the optimal solution to the restoration of extensively damaged mined lands. The sludge they contend could provide earthworms with the organic matter they desperately lack in that environment and after much processing the organic matter can be recycled elsewhere to continue the soil restoration process (Emmerling, Paulsch, 2001). Emmerling and Paulsch (2001), successfully carried out their work in Germany, where they subjected 10-25 tons of the sludge to earthworms treated and untreated areas, and after two years, the population of worms in the treated areas was doubled, compare to lower production in the untreated section of the mined lands (Emmerling, Paulsch, 2001). The work of Barrera, Andres, and Alcanz (2001), also reinforces the work of the two previously mentioned expositions of earthworm’s soil restorative work, but Suthar and Singh (2009), although supportive, points to the inherent risks to the food chain when these worms accumulate high concentrations of heavy metals in their tissues and faeces during their soil detoxifying work (Barrera. Andres and Alcaniz, 2001, Suthar, Singh, 2009). This approach would be a tremendous boost to farmlands globally, because once they become operable, they will be able to increase food production, which would then reduce their prices on the market, as well the prevalence of hunger and starvation. The managing of environmental waste is therefore challenging but not beyond the capacity of the scientific community, because if these tried and proven work are replicated across the globe, significant acreage of formerly useless lands will be restored, causing balanced ecological activities to be restored, especially in areas where the annual rainfall has decreased due to the overwhelming work of greenhouse gases. Strategic Management approach therefore by China, USA and other highly dependent mining countries, can also be inculcated, to develop models that may include combinations of small coal plant closures, use of Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, solar power generation technology, wind energy, geothermal energy development, earthworm methodology, and nuclear energy to achieve the standards established by the International Energy Agency and other global regulatory organizations. Models developed in this way would effectively reduce the level of air pollution, and soil and water contamination, minimize the annual tonnage of soil and water loss, and the valuable chemical nutrients present, and improve the health of the populations in cities and in the immediate environs of coal mining, oil refineries, heavy metal extraction operations, and other facilities that generate harmful environmental waste. Reference 1. Suebsrisi, J., Wilson, M. (2011). A model of Carbon Capture and Storage with demonstration of global warming potential and fossil fuel resource use efficiency 14th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies Energy Procedure, Vol.4 pp. 2465-2469 2. He, F., Yin, J. (2010). Environmental Effects of land cover change: A case study of coal mining areas in Beijing, China 18th International Conference on Geoinformatics, Geoinformatics 2010 art. No. 55679270 3. Bayer, S., Wratten, S., (2001). The Potential of Earthworms to restore Ecosystem Services after Open Pit Mining : A Review Bio-Protection Services Center, Lincoln University, New Zealand 4. Edwards, C. A., Bohlen, P., (1996). Biology of earthworms (3rd Ed.), Chapman & Hall, New York. 5. Emmerling, C., Paulsch. D., (2001). Improvement of Earthworms (Lumbricidae) Community and activity in mine soils from open cast coal mines by application of different organic waste materials. Pedobiologia 45 (2001), pp. 396–40 6. Barrera, I. Andrés, P., and Alcañiz, J.M., Sewage sludge application on soil: Effects on two earthworm species, Water Air and Soil Pollution 129 (2001), pp. 319–332. 7. Suthar, S., S. Singh, (2009). Bioconcentrations of metals (Fe, Cu, Zn, and Pb) in earthworms (Eisenia fetida), inoculated in municipal sewage sludge: Do earthworms pose a possible risk of terrestrial food chain contamination? Environmental Toxicology 24 (2009), pp. 25 8. World Coal Association, (2011). Coal Mining www.worldcoal.org/coal/coal-mining , 05/26/11 Web 9. Hook, M., (2007). Coal Production in China and a Sustainable Climate Change Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/personal/mikael/chinsw. , 05/26/11 Web 10. Li, F., Liu, X., Zhao, D., Wang, B., Jin, J., Hu, D., (2011). Evaluating and Modeling Ecosystem Service Loss of Coal Mining: A Case Study of Mentougou District of Beijing China Ecological Complexity www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoco.com/ 05/27/11 11. Space Daily (2005), China has to close 4,000 of its small coal mines annually The Pub www.spacedaily.com , 05/27/11 Read More