Well, at least the Trump Administration doesn’t want to wreck Yellowstone. The U.S. Forest Service is recommending a twenty-year moratorium on new mining claims on 30,000 acres north of Yellowstone National Park in Montana, and Trump’s environmental raider Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke supports this ban on exploiting natural resources in his home state:
I’ve always said there are places where it is appropriate to mine and places where it isn’t. I’ve long fought to protect the paradise valley. Currently looking at next steps to finalize the withdrawal. https://t.co/yXUIHmHrN9
— Secretary Ryan Zinke (@SecretaryZinke) September 21, 2018
The U.S. Forest Service’s Regional Forester Leanne Marten has signed a letter asking the Department of the Interior to withdraw for 20 years mineral rights on 30,000 acres of public lands in the Absaroka Mountains east of the Paradise Valley. The land is split between two areas where mining companies have been sniffing around for gold mining possibilities — one near Emigrant Gulch, south of Chico Hot Springs, and another near Jardine, a few miles from the park border.
…A final decision now rests with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. The former Republican congressman from Montana has said in the past that he’s opposed to mining proposals there. A 20-year ban is the maximum length that can be ordered by an administration. It can only be made permanent by legislation [link added; Michael Wright, “Extension of Mining Ban North of Yellowstone Moves Forward,” Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 2018.09.21].
Of course, if we want the Trump Administration to enact this moratorium, we’d better not remind the boss that it started with the Obama Administration:
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today joined Under Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bonnie, U.S. Senator Jon Tester and Montana Governor Steve Bullock to announce actions to protect important land near Yellowstone National Park from the threat of mining.
New mining claims will now be prohibited on approximately 30,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land near the park’s northern entrance. The segregation will be in effect for two years while the Departments of Interior and Agriculture evaluate whether to withdraw this land from new mining claims for an additional 20 years, consistent with the Secretary’s authority.
“There are good places to mine for gold, but the doorstep of Yellowstone National Park is not one of them,” said Secretary Jewell. “As we celebrate 100 years of the National Park Service, today’s action helps ensure that Yellowstone’s watershed, wildlife and the tourism-based economy of local communities will not be threatened by the impacts of mineral development” [U.S. Department of the Interior, press release, 2016.11.21].
The U.S. Forest Service used the two-year Obama hold to do science to support the claims that we’re better off not letting more miners tear up the mountains and watershed north of Yellowstone.
Imagine that: anyone in the Trump Administration acting in accord with science and a good idea from Barack Obama.
Related Reading: Meanwhile, a typo has delayed a Canadian company Mineral Mountain Resources’ effort to dig for more gold in the Black Hills. MMR is also trying to slurp up more of Rapid Creek to drill for gold at another site near Rochford.
Zinke is probably in talks with wealthy friends to develop that particular area for a piece of the action. Like other Drumpf appointees he is lining his own pockets at taxpayer’s expense.
They also had plans to start slaughtering grizzly bears in Yellowstone, but a judge has that on hold.
So if you want Zinke to protect the Black Hills, you have to somehow give him a stake in preserving them. Maybe give give him 10 acres to live on very near mining slobs?
I guess that’s what Minnesota is going to have to do to keep copper mine acid slurry out of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. No copper mine has ever FAILED to pollute miles around it. Many, many, many miles around it.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/08/news-yellowstone-supervolcano-geothermal-energy-debate-iceland-hawaii/
Apparently Yellowstone could power the nation with geothermal energy, and possibly reduce probabilities of a supervolcano at the same time, but instead no energy development is permitted.
The downsides would be the power plant footprint, effects on the geysers that people go see, and potential reduction in tourism without the geysers.
Rare earth elements needed by renewables are found at Yellowstone too. So if you could find a way to agreeably do geothermal around Yellowstone, rare earth recovery from the waters may be of interest. But likely that is not going to occur.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703797003670
“Rare Earth Element Speciation in Geothermal Fluids from Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA”
I came across the fact that Yellowstone is actively burping helium. This is coming from naturally-occurring uranium and thorium decays underground that the volcanism is helping to release. Not enough to extract for industrial use however, or to make you sound like you have inhaled a balloon at somebody’s birthday party…
https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/helium
“Yellowstone is releasing about 60 tons of helium from underground stores each year, an amount hundreds, possibly thousands, of times more than expected.”
Deja-Vu all over again with soybean oil instead of crude crud.
https://www.keloland.com/news/local-news/no-injuries-reported-in-train-derailment-near-alton-iowa/1468388502
Two derailments with flooded rivers. Hmmmmm, maybe there is a lesson to be learned from these derailments, doncha think?
I don’t think anyone is delivering soybean oil by pipeline are they?
A Yellowstone pipeline ruptured in Montana in 2015…but it was not close to the park.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20150122/ruptured-yellowstone-oil-pipeline-was-built-faulty-welding-1950s
State Department approved environmental destruction plan for Keystone XL, the newest wonder pipeline guaranteed not to leak until it does and if it does the crud can be cleaned up before it gets to groundwater.
The Drumpf State Department wants that disaster in waiting built before the election, but will have to wait until next year or later, with any luck.
Doc, if memory serves the original or extra crispy Keystone line had a problem laying pipe in high water tables and damaged the pipe trying to hold it underwater long enough for burial.
I don’t think soy oil is piped, but I was thinking that railroads and flood waters aren’t optimal or compatible compadres for the safe delivery of crude crud. Two floods, two derailments.
Curious: can we capture that helium burping out of the ground? Does the helium seep up from any one location in sufficient quantities to make it worth installing collection equipment?
We get most of our helium today from natural gas operations, i.e. when they remove nitrogen to improve the natural gas, they can get the helium as a by-product. It has to be 0.3% by volume to make money apparently.
https://www.nap.edu/read/9860/chapter/7#41
I don’t know what the concentration of helium you could get from either natural gas or geothermal energy exploration around Yellowstone however. I don’t know of anyone collecting helium from geothermal energy sites, but I haven’t looked hard for it. But it sounds like anywhere there is oil and gas development, it could be considered.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/asu-hip113007.php
“Helium isotopes point to the best sources of geothermal energy”
There is apparently a correlation between helium concentrations and good areas for geothermal energy development.