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<DIV align=left><FONT face=Ar On 15/11/2011 7:38 PM, Dusan Soudek wrote: > There are some very natural-looking abandoned older gypsum mines > along the Hants Shore. One of them, near Cheverie (?) is a community > park and a popular swimming hole. I think that it is a wonderful > recreational asset for the community, but it doesn't generate any jobs. > A problem with potential rehabilitation of the Windsor mine site is > that we don't really know whether it will remain closed. Probably even > its owner, Fundy Gypsum, doesn't know for sure. > As minerals go, gypsum is probably environmentally the most benign > one there is. It even neutralizes the acid rain that is ruining our > Atlantic salmon, speckled trout, and other fish populations. If you have to have a mine in your back yard, gypsum would be a good choice. It's a pretty benign mineral. The walls of our houses are made of it. It's in some of the food we eat. It's a common soil additive. And to address Dusan's last point, it is a salt with buffering properties: it can raise the pH of acidic soils and lower the pH of alkaline soils. From my point of view, the fact that Fundy Gypsum will not be developing their property on the Avondale peninsula is a good thing, not because of any hazardous effects of the mineral but because it threatened the local farming community on a number of levels. On the other hand, I am sorry to think that the Windsor mine might never produce again or that we may never see gypsum carriers in the Minas Basin again. Certainly a final blow to the railway, which in itself is a very sad occasion. Heather makes a good point that we do need sustainable employment opportunities in rural Nova Scotia. The wine industry seems to be growing by leaps and bounds where climate allows. There's even a new winery on the Avondale peninsula. And near another Avondale (Barney's River in Pictou County), aquaculture is rearing its delicious head. Strickland's is producing environmentally sustainable Striped Bass and Arctic Char that is available in local restaurants now. None of these operations employ a lot of people, but they do add up. And anyone who attends farmers' markets knows that there's definitely a local food movement afoot, with more and more young people getting involved. Dusan and Heather both mention the relatively large holes in the ground courtesy of gypsum mining. Yes, by Nova Scotia standards they are pretty big. But they are hardly the biggest. That honour goes to the copper mines, such as Bingham Canyon in Utah (which could easily swallow a few Milfords) or the Chuquicamata mine in Chile. Doug (ex-copper, gold, moly miner) Linzey
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