| What Happened to the Mining Industry in the US?
The Flow of Natural Resources and Raw Materials is vital to our nations Industrial Capacity and Job base. There are many reasons why we should be harvesting our own raw materials that already exist in this country, rather than importing them, whenever it is feasible or possible. When there are reasons, which prevent us from doing the collecting of those natural resources within our own country, then and only then should we look towards our trading partners to supply us such raw materials and resources. When we can mine such raw materials within our borders and transport them short distances to the processing facilities, manufacturing factories, refineries, energy power plants and shipping ports or railroads for exporting at an expeditious and cost effective manner, we should. In our country we have seen the loss of most of our mining in the last 40 years. Some was due to Federal Clean Water Act in 1972, which was to prevent the pollution from things like strip mining. Many other mines, drilling rigs and plants were closed due to the cost. This was often due to the World market price for the minerals or natural resource. Much of the mining was shut down due to regulations, labor costs, labor unions, OSHA rules, etc. Some examples of the problems of cost in mining have been overwhelming. When reviewing the recent closing of the Gold Mine in Butte, MT we find that the mine was closed due to the increasing costs of energy to crush the rocks to get the gold out. There costs in energy went from $280,000 per month to 1.6 million per month. Sure there were other issues although imagine getting that electricity bill and trying to manage your expenses? Unpredictable energy costs are necessary for mining and other heavy industry, price spikes on top of over regulations is a death nail. Such over regulation has inadvertently caused the off shoring of Americas industrial might. Without mining near by the raw materials are expensive to transport, so thing are made closer to those raw materials. So in fact we are to blame for our manufacturing and industrial industry losses. We allowed over regulation and linear thought to make us weak. Think about it, this article was written on my visit to China; yep, made in China. "Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
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