What’s the Big Deal About Acid Mine Drainage? Diagnosis, Treatment, and Perspective

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Recommended: Methods that are environmentally friendly to treat acid mine drainage

When pollution is mentioned, the topic most commonly referred to is greenhouse gasses or large water pollutions by chemicals. But what about the pollution that sits and waits over the years, which is constantly getting worse while people don’t know? This is acid mine drainage, the minerals in abandoned mines chemically react with the water run off to create acids that pollute nearby streams and rivers. This pollution only spreads over time, kills wildlife, and even dissolves machinery. Acid mine drainage has been known for centuries, but treatment was scarce then, only recently has it been evolving. In this essay the I will explain what acid mine drainage is, the key treatments from the past 100 or so years, the views of all the types of people have, and what factors change the impact of acid mine drainage. Due to the underlying destructive nature of acid mine drainage, it has been recognized more and more by not only the public, but scientists from around the world and the governments. Within the past 100 years acid mine drainage has gotten progressively worse as a cause of more and more mines being abandoned from earlier centuries and from the current one. What the main change over this time period has been is the way the people have chosen to attack the problem, meaning the treatments behind acid mine drainage are given more thought and are being more focused on to be eradicated for the safety of our ecosystems. Originally treatments were fast and not thought out; people thought simply “sealing” the mine was good enough, which has changed to more chemical and scientific ways of canceling out the acid or actually getting rid of it rather than trapping it. Explaining this change and what differences have happened around the worl...

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Page, Donna. “Soil, water filling with mines' bile; 'Orphaned' sites pass buck to state,” Newcastle Herald, September 18th, 2013, 4.
Ramani, Raja V. "Mining." In Encyclopedia of Global Change. : Oxford University Press, 2001. January 18th, 2014.
Robb, Gordon A., and James D.F. Robinson. "Acid Drainage from Mines. "The Geographical Journal 161.1 (1995): 47-54. Print.
Silas Alonso Braley. Special Report on an Evaluation of Mine Sealing. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh: Mellon Institute , 1962. 1-33.
Wheeling Jesuit University/NASA-supported Classroom of the Future. "Forms of Pollution." Forms of Pollution. 1
Silas Alonso Braley. Special Report on an Evaluation of Mine Sealing. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh: Mellon Institute , 1962. 6.

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