1987 UTAH CENTENNIAL FOUNDATION

MAKING MONEY OUT OF DIRT

Extent of Mining in Utah

Utah's rich endowment of mineral deposits is inextricably entwined with
the State's economy. Mining in Utah began in 1849 with the discovery of iron
ore near Cedar City, Utah. Coal was found near Coalville and Cedar City in
1850, and gold and silver were discovered near Bingham in 1863. The coming of
the railroad in 1869 secured Utah's position as one of the nation's principal
metal producing states.
Utah's base and precious metal deposits include iron, copper, lead, zinc,
gold, and silver. Major ore deposits are located in the Oquirrh Mountains,
Tintic Mountains, San Francisco Mountains, central Wasatch Mountains, and
Cedar Valley. Metals such as antimony, beryllium, mercury and vanadium are
mined primarily in west-central and central Utah. Uranium has been mined in
southeastern and southern Utah. Coal is mined in central, east-central, and
southern Utah. Oil shale and tar sands are found in the Uintah Basin and
eastern Utah. Nonmetals including phosphate, potash and fluorspar are found
primarily in the southern Uintah Mountains and east-central Utah. Abundant
deposits of sand and gravel are present along the shore edge of ancient Lake
Bonneville and dimension stone and limestone are available in most parts of
the State.
There have been approximately 2,000 significant-sized mines in the State
over the past 130 years. The total estimated value of mineral commodity
production in Utah for 1983 is almost one billion dollars. The leading
commodities are copper, coal, gold and silver. Most of the copper, and
significant amounts of gold and silver, were produced by Kennecott Corporation
from the Bingham Mine.
As an important part of Utah's economy, mining provides jobs, raw
materials for manufacturing, and coal and uranium for power generation. Of
the 91 minerals and materials used in our every day lives, 65 are mined in the
State. In 1980, Utah was ranked ninth in the nation by the Bureau of Mines in
overall production of minerals, placing it above its neighboring states of
Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada.
Overview of Mining and Mineral Processing Methods
In order to discuss the sUbject of reclamation, it is helpful to briefly
review what processes take place in and on the ground when mining occurs.
Conventional underground mining includes:
Self-supported openings: open-stapes, room-and-pillar, sublevel
stoping, shrinkage stoping, stull stoping. These are usually
completed in strong, competent rock and leave permanent openings of
adits or shafts.
Supported openings: cut-and-fill stoping, long-wall mining,
short-wall mining, top slicing, square-set and fill stoping. These
methods use backfill (broken rock, tailings), broken and caved roof
materials, or artificial supports such as timbers. These types of
openings usually collapse over time at the entrances of the adits or
portals and shaft collars. The surface easily subsides into the
workings, leaving seemingly unexpected openings in
otherwiselOndisturbed surface land.
Caving methods of sublevel caving and block and panel caving. These
methods are adapted to weak, massive are bodies and require that
large volumes of rock slowly cave when are is withdrawn from below.
Subsidence is usually an issue in this type of mining.
Surface mining methods include:
Open pit mining creates single and multiple bench pits, strip mines,
and glory-holes. Surface mines are usually not very deep.
Placer mining is located in unconsolidated or semiconsolidated sands
and gravels in active or ancient stream beds. Disturbance is usually
to a river bank or stream bed.
Brine recovery uses evaporation ponds in and near the Great Salt
Lake. The remaining dry solid portions are then mined out of the
ponds.

Hot-water solutioning which dissolves bedded salt and potash; high

velocity jetting which utilizes high pressure water jets to mine
uranium;
In situ leaching which uses acid or other leaching solutions such as
ammonium or sodium carbonate in uranium and copper mining; and
Dump and heap leaching which uses chemicals to mine copper, uranium,
and precious metals from low-grade are.
These methods can leave water ponds or low-grade are piles at a mine site.
Processing of mined materials which can occur right on the mine site or many
miles away but which is still part of the mining process, includes:
Concentrating, smelting, crushing, grinding, washing, sizing,
cleaning, magnetic separation, and refining produce wastes that may
be slag or simply a ground-rock slurry fed into tailings ponds or
refuse piles. In addition to the constituents originally in the
mined material, mine processing wastes may contain sulfuric acid,
alkaline solutions (e.g., lime or sodium carbonate), cyanide (e.g.,
gold and silver operations), organics (e.g., from retorting wastes),
oil and grease, trace metals, pyrites, and salts (e.g., coal
cleaning). The type of waste left from mineral processing is highly
dependent upon the minerals and the extracting process. Processing
facilities and equipment can be massive and intricate structures
which at the end of the mine life must be dealt with.
Flotation, solar concentration of brines, retorting, and in situ
retorting processing can leave ponds, uplifted ground, or other
physical features at a mine site.
All mines generally have at least one or two of the following support and
ancillary facilities such as mine offices, bathhouses, powder houses,
maintenance sheds, tipples, weigh stations, electric substations, roads, etc.

Often in the past when all of the minerals were mined out of an area, or
mining became unprofitable, a mine was simply abandoned leaving the area in
the same conditions as when it was active. Everything was left in place and
shafts and tunnels were left open. Mines such as these did not immediately
cause a problem. Most local people knew where the mines were and knew enough
about mining to be wary of such areas. As time has passed, however, newcomers
and new generations of people unfamiliar with mining have come into contact
with the abandoned mines.
At the abandoned sites, old buildings and equipment have become
dilapidated and unsafe. Coal waste piles and underground workings have caught
fire. Poisonous air collects underground and moves to the open entrances with
changes in barometric pressure. Open holes in the ground have grown larger or
become obscured by vegetation. Collapsing mine tunnels have caused open
fractures and craters at the earth's surface (subsidence). Unchecked runoff
has developed drainage ways over refuse or ore piles. Steeply placed waste
dumps have created dangerous embankments or landslides. Interrupted
groundwater, some of drinking water quality and some poisonous, has been left
to drain from open mine portals. Abandonment has also left barren and
devalued land in the midst of prime grazing, wildlife, farming and recreation
areas. Nonetheless, these abandoned mine sites are an attraction to curiosity
seekers and artifact collectors, but can provide a dangerous surprise to
visitors who know nothing of mining.
 Today, only a very few of the smaller mines are abandoned without any
reclamation or rehabilitation of the site. State laws passed in 1975 and 1979
now require Utah mine operators to perform reclamation in an area when the
mine life is finished.

Reclamation, from the verb reclaim has Latin roots. More recently it
comes from the Middle English word, reclamen, which means to call back. In
the mining business reclamation has two meanings. It previously meant only
the recovery of coal or ore from a mine that had been abandoned. Reclamation
as it will be discussed here means the rehabilitation or restoration of mined
lands into another productive use.
The widespread concept of reclamation is relatively new in the last 15 to
20 years. In the early part of this century, farmers and conservationists
began voicing strong concerns about the amount of land that was being left not
only useless but which was causing problems downstream from the mining. While
some states have had reclamation laws on the books for a number of years, they
was often ineffective or inconsistent. As early as 1967, the United States
Congress considered legislation that would comprehensively govern the
devastating effects of certain coal mining practices. Ten years later, Public
Law 95-87, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977
became a reality. This law provided for the mining of coal in an
environmentally sound fashion. It set standards which all surface and
underground coal operators must comply with by requiring detailed mining and
reclamation plans. It also requires adequate bonds for reclamation should the
operator fail to reclaim at the end of the mine life.
This same Act also established a reclamation fund to finance restoration
of land and waters that had been mined and abandoned prior to the enactment
date of SMCRA. The Abandoned Mined Land Reclamation Program was established
to perform the work on abandoned mines. The monies for this program come from
a fee which every coal mine operator pays on each ton of coal produced. These
fees are placed in a trust fund by a federal agency, the Office of Surface
Mining Reclamation & Enforcement. Fifty percent of the trust fund monies paid
by coal producers in each state are returned to the State for reclaiming
abandoned mines.
In Utah, this program is the responsibility of the Division of Oil, Gas
and Mining, a division of the Utah Department of Natural Resources. The first
task of Utah's Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program is to identify those
abandoned mines which pose a threat to the public's safety or the
environment. The Utah AMR Program has found, from field inventory, that it
has a minimum of 4,500 hazardous mineral shaft and adits, many of the latter
with winzes (a shaft inside a mine). From records of a mineral survey
conducted over the last 10 years by Utah's Geological Survey in the 136
organized mining districts, that figure is probably double - 9,000. This
number includes abandoned coal and uranium mines also. It was estimated in
1977 by the Soil Conservation Service that there are 31,555 acres of mined
land to be reclaimed in Utah.
 As the mines are identified, the degree of hazard or danger is assessed.
These sites are ranked according to a set plan in the AMR Program. A given
number of mines are reclaimed each year, depending on available funds. The
ranking system ensures that the most severe problems are taken care of first.
The AMR Program is not the only entity performing reclamation in Utah.
To date, five once-operating coal mines have been closed and reclaimed either
by the past operator or the landowner. The largest single reclamation project
in the state was completed this past year by a mineral mine operator near
Tooele. That project included the reclamation of 532 acres disturbed by
mining and an additional 170 acres of borrow areas. Reclamation is ongoing at
many active mine sites also. This is required of every coal mine in the state
and is usually termed interim reclamation, since the work will have to be
redone at the end of mine life in order to reclaim the entire site. Large
mineral operators usually reclaim where they can as they operate even though
this may not be required of them. Even some smaller operators set up
revegetation test plots to get an idea of the ease or difficulty that they
will meet with in reclaiming the entire site.

Taking a closer look at what elements are involved in reclamation, the

most important aspect is planning. Work at a site usually involves the
following considerations: portal, adit and shaft closures; demolition and
burial or removal of facilities, equipment and debris; recontouring of waste
piles, ponds, and the entire site to blend into the surrounding area; soiling
the site with a growth medium; revegetation by seeding and planting; and
handling special problems of surface and underground fires, subsidence, and
drainage restoration and control.
Planning takes into account the process which is now required when mine
operators seek a permit to mine in the state. At the start of a mine,
operators asked among other things, to decide how much topsoil they will
scrape up and store, where they will store it, whether the amount is adequate
for final reclamation and how they will protect it. They must also provide a
comprehensive plan of how the site will be returned to another use and what
that use is projected to be. Planners for abandoned mines must be as thorough
in the development of a reclamation project but without the benefit of any
previous planning for the site. For instance, topsoil was not saved and
stored so some must be found nearby.
Portal, adit and shaft closures are subject to some fairly standard
methods and some experimental technology. Horizontal openings, adits and
portals generally receive solid double block or rock walls which are cemented
into place 15 to 20 feet inside the entrance. These seals help prevent the
escape of any poisonous gas. The soil is followed up with 15 to 20 feet of
backfill to the entrance and is often covered over in the recontouring of a
site.
 Where it is feasible, shafts are backfilled with waste rock from the
site. This is because it eliminates the hole in the ground, it can be watched
over time, and it stabilizes the collar of the shaft and prevents it from
enlarging out. It is considered to be the most desired, permanent, cost
effective method over time. However, it not always possible to backfill since
there may be no backfill available or the area is not ground equipment
accessible. Ground disturbing equipment may not be allowed in parts of
national forests, national parks, or other environmentally sensitive areas.
Historical considerations may dictate that the complete eradication of the
hole in the ground is unacceptable and unmitigable. In instances where the
patented claim owner, the U.S. Geological Survey, the state geologist or water
supply users insist on maintaining access into a mine, other alternatives are
considered. Other technology used is cement cones, grates, slabs, fencing and
grids. Such closures are not always perfect or permanent, since it may be
difficult to monitor the shaft collar and its outward expansion as it sloughs
inward. In Utah, there is a particular problem in some cross country ski and
snowmobiling areas where backfilling is not an option, but where avalanches
continually wreck havoc on grid closures.
Subsidence has been dealt with in many ways since the conditions all
vary. Mining may have been deep or shallow. It may have been extensive in
multiple seams of mineral or in a single deposit or seam. In the Abandoned
Mine Program, subsidence in residential, farming, commercial, and remote
grazing areas has been addressed. Most of the work has been successful in
stabilizing the ground by pumping a grout or other filler material into the
void. If the subsidence is near the surface, excavation of the old workings
or simple backfill has sufficed. In unusual situations where regulations
require zero subsidence the operator backfills, contemporaneous with mining,
using waste rock.
There are few competent buildings and structures left at abandoned mine
sites. Most have been robbed long ago of their integrity along with any
salvageable materials. Iron is taken for scrap, tanks appropriated by local
farmers or ranchers, handcut sandstone masonry pillaged, and wood and
galvanized sheeting is hauled off. Although it is allowable for the owners of
abandoned mine property to do as they wish with historical structures (those
over 50 years old and which are contributory to an understanding of past
mining), the AMR program must render detailed drawings, maps and histories
prior to any physical work to disturb the same structure. In most cases, the
structures and equipment are demolished and buried in a pit created on the
mine site. Where the landowner strongly desires and/or where it can be
effected, only the unstable roof or other unstable portion of the building is
removed and the structure or equipment is left as a "moldering ruin". Mine
cars have been salvaged from abandoned sites and are now part of roadsite
historical stops.
 Recontouring requires reshaping the site and involves cut and fill
balancing of earth quantities. The challenge here is to move material with
economy in mind. The more and the further you move a cubic yard of fill, the
more you spend on a project. A typical mine in Utah's mountainous terrain
consists of a notch cut into the side of a hill, creating a working pad area
which is partly fill dirt. In planning this part of reclamation, it is
important to decide if the entire pad or highwall needs to be eliminated. All
sizes of waste piles and ponds must be regraded. Most important, drainage
must be restored through a site, preferably not right over the fill dirt
area. In more recent mines, an active drainage is culverted under a mine site
pad. The culvert must be removed and the riparian or streambank habitat
restored.
The very best soil material on a site is saved for the topdressing after
a site is contoured. Depending on site conditions, only 6 inches may be
available, but several feet of growth material is preferred. Recent research
is showing that stockpiling topsoil for more than a year so grossly disrupts
the structure and life of microorganisms living in the soil that it becomes
very poor growth medium. Abandoned sites with no stockpiled topsoil may not
be at such a disadvantage after all. Soil characteristics that are evaluated
for growth potential are texture, structure, color, organic matter, pH,
phosphorous, potassium, and nitrogen. The properties of permeability, water
holding capacity, inherent fertility, and erodibility are determined from such
information. Soil amendments are made where necessary.
Revegetation, the final step, had its technological beginnings in the
west in restoring game and range lands. A National Academy of Sciences Study
took the first hard look at the rehabilitation potential of western coal lands
in 1974. Their concern was for the vast acreages of surface coal mining,
primarily in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming which have low annual
precipitation, poor soil development, high erosion potential, and slow
ecological processes of vegetative succession. The findings and
recommendations of the committee were encouraging in that technology,
carefully applied, should yield stable and productive sites. Restoration,
replacing the exact condition prior to mining, they deemed was not possible,
but reclamation or rehabilitation was possible. This finding has been borne
out each year as hundreds of acres are reclaimed concurrently in the process
of strip mining in the west.
Preparation of the seedbed on a resoiled site includes furrowing, contour
ploughing, terracing, pitting, and the construction of small basins, or
otherwise roughing the surface of the soil. The creation of such
microenvironments for little seedlings is more conducive to growth than is a
"baby bottom smooth" soil surface. A seed mix is chosen which is compatible
with the chosen land use and precipitation level and which contains some
immediate soil stabilizers or nurse type crops. Often, short-lived invader
"weeds" (a weed being any plant growing where it is not wanted) take over a
site and stabilize it while more desirable plants become established. Since
seeds are the least costly component in the reclamation process, skimping on
amount and variety is not recommended. Seeding is generally timed to take
advantage of spring snow melt moisture and is done late in the fall.
 Overplanting with tree and shrub seedlings is a more expensive investment
but worthwhile if it is important to speed up the revegetation process at a
site.
Monitoring of the reclaimed site is recommended to fine tune the work and
correct any problems arising from severe storms and runoff. Erosion, slope
failure, overgrazing, and failed seed germination are some difficulties which
can be encountered. Fencing sites from grazers is common for the initial
years of growth. Ideally, a moratorium on grazing would last 10 to 15 years in
the west.

Since the beginning of the Abandoned Mine Program, $1.1 billion has been
spent nationwide on reclamation in 36 states. This has resulted in 66,000
acres of land returned to productive use, 5,624 mine sites reclaimed, 7,676
mine openings sealed, 451 slides addressed, 239 fires abated, and 948
subsidence cases addressed.
The regulatory agencies generally place a price on reclamation of a site
anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 an acre. The costs vary depending on the
features at a site. A number of shafts or portals, fires, steep slopes, large
waste piles, massive structures, etc., all will drive the price per acre
upward. Costs will also increase for the remoteness of a site. Mobilizing
equipment into an area off the beaten path or having to repair a road to make
it equipment accessible will cause the site costs to steepen. The average
that has been spent nationwide through the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program
is $19,910. In Utah, the average is $26,600 per acre. The average cost is
higher in Utah because of the emphasis on shaft closures versus the actual
land reclamation.
In Utah, as in other states, the mine reclamation laws are having an
impact. Surface mines are being reclaimed contemporaneous with mining, mines
at the end of the mine life are being reclaimed, and bonds have been forfeited
on some mines where the operator chooses to walk away from the site. In the
last case, the state's mine regulatory agency usually performs reclamation by
contracting for the work.
Land which was once disturbed by mining and mining processes is now being
returned to its original use or another use. These are many and varied and
include agricultural uses such as: pasture or range land, wildlife grazing,
and cropland. Recreation on reclaimed lands is a popular postmining land
use. Ballfields, parks with miniature golf, horseshoe pits and picnic areas,
boat docks on lakes created by mining, summer camps, and wildlife refuge areas
have all been developed on past mining sites. Residential and commercial
land, undermined and affected by subsidence of the mine workings, has been
stabilized and the use remains the same. Surface landowners who did not own
or control the mineral rights, and state and federal land management agencies
are happy to both profit from the mining and to have the land returned to
another productive use once mining is complete.
Remining
Some inactive mine sites may have reason to not be reclaimed. These
sites may not be conducive to full reclamation for one or several reasons.
They may not have not been exhausted of their full mineral or commodity value,
valuable ore dumps may remain from a past mine operation which are of interest
to potential operators, and there may be no bond, reclamation requirement, or
funds to cover reclamation. Luckily, many sites disturbed during past mining
booms are receiving attention today. For instance, several large inactive
mines in Utah and many in Nevada are being remined as profitable ventures or
have plans for the same. These sites, once they are mined again, fall under
the jurisdiction of current permitting and reclamation laws. Any part of the
site which is redisturbed during this process must then become part of a final
reclamation plan. Mining companies are finding that new recovery methods make
once abandoned operations economical enough to rework waste piles as ore piles
and still reclaim the site at the end of the mine life.
Reclamation programs in some states, including Utah, have attempted to
include remining as part of the overall cleanup and rehabilitation of a site.
Plans for such are quite involved and difficult but are worthwhile when the
sale of the commodity being remined can be used to offset the total cost of
the reclamation project. Since state and federal agencies are not and should
not be in the mining business, special remining/reclamation arrangements are
resorted to only when it is imperative to clean up a site for safety or strong
environmental reasons and there are no mining companies which are immediately
interested in remining the site.
Sunrnary
"Man has always altered his environment. nl Few of these alterations
have a specific timeline of use like mining does. Within a lifetime, minerals
can be extracted from an area and the area returned to another use. In
contrast, housing projects, highways, parks, cultivation, and shopping malls
are all multi-generation propositions. Their disturbance to the land is
permanent viewed from our lifetime alone. ThUS, the development of laws and
technology concerning mine reclamation is a success story which has developed
in our lifetime and which should be viewed as a success story by developers
and environmentalists alike. We have arrived at a place that our country was
called to in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt when he said to Congress "To
waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead
of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in
the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand
down to them amplified and developed."

1 Thadis W. Box, Dean of the College of Natural Resources, Utah State

University, Logan Utah.
Box, T.W. et ale 1974. Rehabilitation Potential of Western Coal Lands.
National Academy of Sciences. Cambridge, Mass. Ballinger Publishing Co.
Forest Service. 1983. Anatomy of a Mine from Prospect to Production.
Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Ogden, Utah: General
Technical Report INT-35.
Soil Conservation Service. 1979. The Status of Land Disturbed by Surface
Mining in the United States. U.S. Department of Agriculture. SC5-TP-158.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office: 1979-631-344/2860.
St. AUbin, K. and Massie, S. 1987. 1977/1987 The Abandoned Mine Reclamation
Program. Springfield, Illinois: Association of Abandoned Mine Land
Programs.
Wright, M.A. 1986. Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program Project Summary. Salt
Lake City, Utah. Unpublished data.
Wright, M.A., Croft, M.G., Smith, R.V., Vandell, T.D. 1986. Mining and Mine
Facilities in Ground Water Protection Strategy for the State of Utah.
Utah Department of Health Publication.

Mary Ann Wright is the Administrator of the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program
for the State of Utah. She received a Masters Degree in Zoology with an
emphasis in Ecology from Indiana University in 1978. She has worked in the
area of mine reclamation for the past nine years in the Department of Natural
Resources. Prior to that, and while in graduate school, her work involved
environmental education and policy and land use issues.

~W
9/87