They won't be satisfied until we're all shivering in the dark;
Via Instapundit. And read the comments. Update: the site is getting hammered right now, so you may have to wait a while to get in. Here's the Google cache.My name’s Ronnie Bryant, and I’m a mine operator. I’ve been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people…. [pause] Nearly every day without fail — I have a different perspective — men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just … you know … what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.
25 years ago the mining start up that I was working for wanted to rehab an old gold mine from the 1920's.
The shaft and tunnels off of it were in surprisingly good shape after being flooded for more than 60 years. Test drilling showed a profitable at the time quarter ounce per tonne. We were going to be using the only method allowed in NS at the time for extraction, a combination of shaker tables to extract the gold which was considerably more expensive than using a cyanide leach.
All was good to go. Then the provincial environment dept informed the owners that they were required to completely clean up the tailings and old buildings from the 20's. The cost from this put the profit point at around a third of an ounce per tonne.
End result? No mine, no jobs, no taxes, no revenues from the gold for anyone.
The site had sat for 60 years and the govt was perfectly happy with it like it was. It still sits like that today. The only real difference is that no gold has been taken from the site and the shaft and tunnels are once again full to the top with water.
The Suzuki Foundation is hiring.
If I was smart like a welfare immigrant bum , I would change my address and apply for welfare and a disability pension.
WTF---Guess that I am not that smart and don't fit in with the 'New World order'.
Makes me angry!
What David McElroy doesn't understand, in what is otherwise a good piece, is that this kind of environmental star chamber has been going on for decades. Cleaning up the EA process alone would probably add at least 1% GDP to the US and Canadian economies. Ever since introduction in the early 1980s, CEAA and its predecessor EARP have been probably the single biggest job killers in Canada.
And SPEA has usurped much of what remained of private property rights.
Burning all coal we can is the only way to ensure we survive as species.
Mine 'em and burn 'em!
And atlas shrugged. I know of several businesses that have just shrugged due to regulation, taxation and bureaucratic B.S. Making it impossible for small and medium businesses to function and keep folks working and paying taxes.
There is something
difficult to understand in the way the current US administration is clearly on the path of destruction of their economy.
As everybody knows by now, Texas as opposed to the rest of the country is booming. To top it off, it is the free enterprise that is doing the booming.
Seems that the admistration of the US government can't possibly allow that.
Note this article: What's Obama got against the Lone Star State?
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/07/whats-obama-got-against-lone-star-state#ixzz1T7tYybhI
The way they operate is to shut down everything that actually works.
Are they pushing for a revolution?
It looks like that from here. Being serious.
Yes, Lev, if you were an anthropologist sent to observe western civilization your report would undoubtedly conclude that job of the chiefs and witch doctors of the land is to seek out and destroy the best functioning and most profitable parts of society.
Progressives and turned their back on working class men ages ago, first non-union then union. It is amazing that the very foundation of socialism in NA, coal mining (and other heavy industry), is now the main target of their New Left brothers and sisters.
Aaron just prefers the coal be mined in third world countries without any regulations.
How do you know, oh, master of one-liners?
correction: Progressives and academics (or is that redundant?)turned ...
I don't obviously. You made it clear that not mining at all was your preference. I was just joking about the consequences of that.
Exactly. And it's the same story whether it's mining, logging, beef ranching, being a landlord or building houses.
We are at the point that even if an enterprising sort had the endurance and capital to get through the regulatory processes, after subtracting the ongoing annual costs of regulatory compliance (and paying for the useless bureaucracy that churns out the red tape) most people sooner or later get the fuggits.
There is absolutely no ability in the minds of civil servants to apply an introspective sort of corporate analysis. They never ask themselves the question: "Where would my paycheque come from if there were no private enterprises?"
Jamie MacMaster
'They never ask themselves the question: "Where would my paycheque come from if there were no private enterprises?"'
Regardless, whether they ask or not, they will get the answer....
In 1975 I read Atlas Shrugged. It changed my outlook on life. This topic is eerily reminiscent of the American Motors chapter. In many ways what is happening today was predicted by Ayn Rand more than 50 years ago. BTW, Atlas Shrugged is the only book I have read 4 times, once a decade.
Drip by drip the left are imprisoning us into their wierd world of stupdity and bureacracy of insanity. The US is a powder keg because of Obama's incompetence and horrible policies.
I have met many environmentalists in my long life,but can't think of any who didn't get their paycheque from the taxpayers,many teachers and civil servants,none that I can remember from private industry.
I don't blame Bryant for being discouraged,all a company tries to do is make a profit by employing a lot of people and improving the whole economy,but "progressives" just don't seem to approve of profit.
Here in B.C. back in the glorious days of the NDP,the mining companies left the Province due to the same attitude by government as mentioned at the meeting Bryant attended.
A family friend was the manager of a big mining company here,and said he'd never encountered such negativity toward a legitimate business. His company moved to South America,and we saw thousands of good jobs go with them.
If Obama is destroying the country, why do so many people still support him? Look at the cash he has been able to raise lately for his campaign.
I don't understand it. Why would citizens so eagerly support a man who is so clearly destroying their own country?
Posted by: TJ at July 25, 2011 11:46 AM
Here as two thoughts on that.
1. The black population in general, one supposes will vote for a black guy. Note Juan Williams, he knows the problems that Obama is causing, at the end of everything he will vote Obama.
2. There are operators behind Obama that pull the strings of his body parts to look as though he is moving it himself. Perhaps he has no clue, it sure looks like it.
The answer by conservatives or Republicans, TJ, it that it is easy to sell the idea that someone else should support you, especially under the guise of "fairness and social justice". That is part of the problem but the bigger problem is that the Republican's economic record isn't much better than the Democrats. Of course, now Republicans are talking small government but only because Tea Party organization scares the crap out of them. Voters know that both political parties are full of it so they vote for the leader who makes them feel good about themselves and the future.
Regardless, whether they ask or not, they will get the answer....
Posted by: sasquatch at July 25, 2011 11:26 AM
Aye, pity it always has to come to that, though.
Progressives/liberals/leftists remain totally immune to the mountains of hard evidence that their preferred political/economic system NEVER works. And to them, no 'hard evidence' is harder to grasp than math, a science unmoved by emotion, unmotivated by 'good intentions', ignorant of the myths of what's SUPPOSED to happen ... math only measures what HAS happened, so it must be igonred.
I had 16 employees in a retail business. One of them was frequently late, sloppy and brought many of her personal problems to work. We carried her because we felt sorry for her.
Guess who took us to the employment tribunal?
Every absurd claim was dismissed except one, because despite witnesses I didn't have something in writing.
It was a significant reason we adjusted the business so we were less dependent on staff and subject to a lot of govt intrusion.
A fascinating FACT which the lamestream media refuses to acknowledge is this ... America is the ONLY country to ever descend into top-down, govt-imposed socialism WHILE HAVING A VERY WELL-ARMED POPULATION numbering in the many millions.
I'm an old, boring, gray-haired Canadian/American dual citizen who personally knows at least 50 normal, middle class Americans who EACH owns (and knows how to effectively use) a small personal arsenal of LEGAL hand guns, LEGAL rifles and LEGAL shotguns. In the past year you'd be surprised to know how many times I've heard some of these folks openly discuss / forecast to me their prediction (usually around 50-50) of the liklihood that America will soon be in an armed conflict between tax givers and the tax takers. When I respond, "Really?!" ... their most common answer to me is "Why do you think I've upsized my weapons?" ... they live in the U.S. ALL year, I only live there part of the year, but that's what MANY boring, middle-class suburban Americans keep telling me is the level of their frustration.
I shrugged.
I had enough, and I'd "had enough".
Laid off my employees.
Sold the assets.
Shut her down.
Retired at 46.
That was 18 years ago.
Who is John Galt?
Keep demonizing business and industry, liberals. They'll close up shop or leave the country. What will you do then?
The Leftist creep crawls on. We'll awaken when we are indeed freezing in the dark wondering what terrible natural disaster hit us.
By that time perhaps David Suzkooki and Windbag Gore, known and renowned among Leftist enviro wackos, will come to our rescue with instructions on how to survive in Stone Age conditions.
I sold my business a year ago, now I'm one of the people I used to despise. I'm a consultant, who makes things difficult for contractors. I really have no choice. I'm 10 years from retirement, and being a contractor for many years, never paid into a pension. I have about 5-10 years to put together a retirement package. I could have planned better, I guess, but raising a family, and trying to survive all the idiotic roadblocks to business wore me down.
As I was reading the thread, an ad came on Fox News, asking for support for the EPA. It kind of took me by surprise, that a regulatory body needs to campaign/advertise its supposed virtues. It was nothing more than typical scare tactics.
25 years ago the mining start up that I was working for wanted to rehab an old gold mine from the 1920's.
The shaft and tunnels off of it were in surprisingly good shape after being flooded for more than 60 years. Test drilling showed a profitable at the time quarter ounce per tonne. We were going to be using the only method allowed in NS at the time for extraction, a combination of shaker tables to extract the gold which was considerably more expensive than using a cyanide leach.
All was good to go. Then the provincial environment dept informed the owners that they were required to completely clean up the tailings and old buildings from the 20's. The cost from this put the profit point at around a third of an ounce per tonne.
End result? No mine, no jobs, no taxes, no revenues from the gold for anyone.
The site had sat for 60 years and the govt was perfectly happy with it like it was. It still sits like that today. The only real difference is that no gold has been taken from the site and the shaft and tunnels are once again full to the top with water.
And that, AtlanticJim, is part and parcel why Nova Scotia remains a have-not province.
The leftist creep crawls on, shutting down existing business or preventing new business from starting, throwing more and more people onto the welfare system because of people like Suzuki and Gore. The welfare payments increase the debt and place our children and grandchildren in an untenable position. No work, no money, no research into how to solve the pollution problems, a down hill spiral.
Bushiness create GNP and products/service that the world needs, jobs to keep people off of welfare, profits for investment into research to solve some of the problems, tax money to finance education and health services and pay for social security programs as well as pay off debt. This creates a better situation of all segments of the population and insures a decent opportunity for future generations.
How long will we continue to let these pinkos sabotage our society. People like Soros have made their nest egg and could car less about the rest of us.
So many good comments above. I to read Atlas Shrugged during the high school years and that plus my family's experience made me an enemy of socialism for life.
To TJ, you can see in Greece what stupidity the population does when enough of them survive only by entitlements or at the public trough. Most of the Americans that support Obama are on entitlements or at the trough and want them to continue even if their neighbours are put out of work and the country collapses around them.
Funny that the two Socialist Worker Party supporters who quite often come here to spread their filth do not comment when a topic like this is posted.
I'm not a fan of gov't regulation but when you see the mess that unfettered mining coupled with gov't subsidies leaves behind. (Faro in the Yukon) as a Taxpayer being asked to pay 500 Million dollars initially to clean up that hole in the ground plus whatever else just leaves me confused.
Here in B.C. back in the glorious days of the NDP,the mining companies left the Province due to the same attitude by government as mentioned at the meeting Bryant attended. ( posted by dmorris)
Yes, they conducted a war against mining and business in general, causing the BC economy to tank. Even after the government changed, we profit much less from the commodity boom than we could have. I've posted this before, but is not the Obama Administration much like having the NDP in power in Washington, DC?
Atlantic Jim puts his finger on it - enviros always demand enviro accommodations that make the project a money loser .
Environmentalists kill jobs. If people like this mine operator spent some money organizing/ informing people at the grassroots level ( public meetings, enlisting local businessman of like mind ) of the benefits, the politicians would not cave before these socialists. It's strange that the socialists are more effective marketers than are their business adversaries.
Two things noticed on the return trip from Florida to Ontario last weekend.
A rather large billboard along the interstate in coal country that said "Welcome to Obamas No Job Zone". Camera was not handy unfortunately.
The other was lots of "2012 - End of an Error" bumper stickers.
One day the word enviromentalist will have a meaning akin to Nazi.
When the lights go out , the guns will come out.
There is only somuch human beings can take before death becomes preferable to life in a planned concentration camp, called socialism.
I worked in the mining exploration business in the late 80’s, frankly my opinion was that 85% of the work was to mine peoples pockets and not put holes in the ground. Had an interesting discussion with someone that founded a large mine in BC that is still going strong. He felt that the scum that was pillaging capital on over inflated results in the VSE did more to harm real mines opening, than the NDP. Keep in mind also the lady that bought Windy Crag was more interested in mining the taxpayers than starting another mine.
Mines have a large impact on the geography and environment, impacts that will last hundreds of years if not longer, so you dam well better get it right at the get go. I review mines as part of a regulatory review, I personally think almost every miner and consultant I meet want to do an excellent job and produce the best mine possible, for everyone. The problem is that many people don’t agree on how to get there. One regulation I would like to see changed is the effluent discharge regs. Right now a mine has to treat the water to meet and extremely strict requirement. The irony of course is that mines are built in areas with high mineralization and the natural water contamination is often far higher than what the mine is allowed to discharge. The regs should be changed so that the mine has to meet the natural contamination in the water, prior to the start of the operation. That will save a lot of money and energy for everyone.
I know of at least 7 potential new and restarts just in the NW of BC alone. If all keeps going labour shortages of skilled workers will be a big issue.
@Grgsrvc, 3:47 P.M.
Thing is, nobody HAS TO clean up that hole. Mother Nature is quite capable of doing so herself. I have visited dozens of old mine sites that were never reclaimed, and some of them you could miss entirely if you didn't know they were there, so effectively has Nature overgrown them.
You have been sold a bill of goods by the Watermelon crowd, if you have the belief that a cleanup is inevitably necessary. And mining practices have improved considerably, so the likelihood of future mines leaving such a scar in the earth has lessened considerably.
And, as a practical matter, often new technology makes it possible to reopen abandoned mines, and get many more years of life and jobs out of them. Or tailings dumps may get reworked, and valuable minerals profitably extracted, with the byproduct of making the reworked tailings actually cleaner. Filling in old mine pits, or burying the tailings dumps often makes such redevelopment impossible, or excessively costly. The long-term result: "reclaimed" mine sites may in fact be a longer-term source of pollution than "abandoned" mine sites that ultimately get redeveloped.
Something to think about.
Lets look at the oil sands.
The environmentalists would love to shut it down, kill the jobs and taxes it provides and leave the oil saturated surface be.
The truth is that the environmentalists really wished they would have had the knowledge and capital to clean up the "tar sands" before "big oil" decided it was time to profit from cleaning up the mess. Instead they corrode themselves with envy, and try to make everybody else feel just as sh!##^.
Atlantic Jim:
Just out of curiosity, was that the Molega Mines?
at 1/4 oz per tonne after taxes and fees what would be left?
I find it difficult to believe that could be profitable even with todays prices.
Get a leak from a mine into a river and try to stop it, then what, as long as its not your backyard right?
Blanks, 1/4 ounce was profitable then. Don't remember the exact numbers 25 years later. Gold was running around $400 to $450 then if that part of the memory serves. Production costs were probably on the order of $60 to $70 a tonne. So lots of room.
Removing and rehabing thousands of tonnes of tailings lousy with arsenic (a natural part of the gold ore bodies in NS) would have driven the price per tonne through the roof.
Bryceman, Can't actually remember the mine's old name. It was near a tiny village named Stillwater, near Sherbrooke NS. We ran 7 days a week. 10 hours a day for three months doing a 5000 tonne bulk sample to verify the drilling results. Fun project all in all and a great intro for a 22 year old mining technologist.
My sister-in-law is building copper mines in Chile for an American construction/engineering giant. They can't hire staff fast enough. Capital and talent will flow to the points where it can productively be put to use. Block it here and watch it go elsewhere.
Update on the story: http://news.yahoo.com/ala-county-readies-possible-record-bankruptcy-155646239.html
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Alabama's largest county is laying the groundwork for filing what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, over a more than $3 billion debt for its sewer system.....
I emigrated from europe to canada to work in mining. Studied in NS, tried to make a go of mining after university, ended up spending most of my time working outside NS or abroad. I moved to ontario, now the bulk of my work is in toronto, with trips to northern ontario, quebec and mexico.
I would never move back to NS, despite the excellent time I had there, because I cannot see the province pulling itself up. Gold at 1g, even 0.5g can be profitable; i know because i am a mining consultant.