Re: Phosphate mining

Jo Schaper wrote:
>    It is the lack of educational balance which promotes the poster's 
> question, as well as the polarization of enviromentalists vs 
> industrialists in the States. Modern people have very little clue where 
> the benefits of their modern lifestyle come from, and that there is a 
> price for that. On the other hand, people want products cheaply, so the 
> mineral/chemical companies do not feel they can afford to do any but the 
> required minimum in environmental compliance and restoration after a 
> resource is exploited and so forth. These standards are much lower in 
> the States than in Europe. It is what drives a company to the cheapest 
> and usually worst operating practice, which brings out the screaming and 
> placard waving locals and environmentalists on the other side, instead 
> of requiring slightly more expensive methods of mining, resulting in 
> higher prices,(which should be gladly paid by the same 
> environmental-professing folks) but more preservation of the land, and a 
> better stewardship ethic all around.
>
> We seem incapable of the longer view here by working together instead of 
> at short-sighted cross-purposes.  Phosphate mining is often in conflict 
> with local groundwater resources (furnishes local drinking water) and 
> the tourist industry in north Florida. This is a political powderkeg.
>
> Perhaps the poster should work towards viable compromise, instead of 
> citing statistics. Twenty tons of anything isn't very much in the big 
> picture.

Kudos, Jo, for such a clear and consise statement of the problem.

regards
dick gibson


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Richard I. Gibson, Gibson Consulting
Gravity-Magnetic-Geologic Interpretations
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