NYT: Environment pays price for Nevada gold (too bad for SLC)

ELKO, Nev. - Just outside the chasm of North America's biggest open-pit gold mine, there is an immense, ever-flowing oasis in the middle of the Nevada desert. It is an idyllic and isolated spot where migratory birds often alight for a stopover. But hardly anything about it is natural.
This is water pumped from the ground by Barrick Gold of Toronto to keep its vast Goldstrike mine from flooding, as the world's third-largest gold company carves a canyon 1,600 feet below the level of northern Nevada's aquifer.
Nearly 10 million gallons a day draining away in the driest state in the nation - and the fastest growing one - is just one of the many strange byproducts of Nevada's tangled love affair with gold.
An extensive review of government documents and court records, and scores of interviews with scientists and present and former mine industry workers and regulators, show that an absence of federal guidelines, of the sort that are commonplace for coal or oil, allowed gold miners wide latitude to operate here in the desert, perhaps more than any other American industry.

more...

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3356234

he gave them public land to destroy for nothing.

and how much cyanide does that leave behind? it's outrageous that we still allow laws crafted by the robber barrons of the 19th century largely control the environmental decisions on public lands in large parts of the american west.

I doubt they do since that is the most regulated gold mining activity. Cyanide causes huge ecological problems so most companies avoid it if possible simply because they get sued and then are forced to clean up their mess. Now then, more then likely they move several tons of earth to get a single ounce of gold and that is indeed the standard in mining today. It can be done profitably under those conditions but in several countries mining companies aren't required to back fill their massive holes which means perminent scares are left on the Earth's surface. Now, if the companies back fill the area then little perminent harm should be done provided they keep the top soil seperate from the bed rock and over burden.

Not sure that is what really occurs or not though.

making them extremely wealthy while the public gets ever poorer due to the huge environmental and health impacts
the public has to deal with.

Polluters bribe the Admin. & key Congressmen rather than having to pay market prices or pay for the cost of preventing
public harm.