1. When and where did a truck from the Yanacocha gold mine spill 150 kilograms of mercury out of some poorly sealed container?
2. Why did many local people collect the mercury spilleed?
3. Were other villagers, hired by the mine to clean up the spill, provided with any protective gear?
4. What negative effects can mercury have on human body?
5. How many people did the spill affect and in which ways?
6. How much money was spent on the clean-up by the Newmont Mining Company, the US-based Corporation and the World Banks International Finance Corporation (IFC)?
7.
8. What were some of the spill victims offered in exchange for agreeing not to sue the mine?
9. Where is the second largest gold mine in the world (after the Grasberg mine in Indonesia)?
10. Do the communities affected by the mine receive a share of the mining wealth?
11. What other kind of assistance does the community receive from the company?
12. Why do many area residents worry about the mine?
13. What negative results are made on the nature of the region?
14. What has Newmont proposed doing in connection with and what is the reaction of the local people?
Define whether the following statements are true or false.
1. Many local people, knowing that the material was was toxic, collected it hoping that is valuable.
2. Other villagers were hired by the mine to clean up the spilland were provided with good protective gear.
3. Mercury can damage the lungs, kidneys, and nervous system. It can also cause birth defects.
4. The spill affected an estimated 925 people, but none of them was treated for mercury poisoning and hospitalized.
5. In exchange for agreeing not to sue the mine, some of the spill victims were offered small cash settlements and medical care.
6. Yanacocha, located high in the Andes, is the most profitable gold mine in South America and the first largest gold mine in the world.
7. The company also claims that it has created over 1,600 jobs in the area, and helped build schools and clinics.
8. Many area residents argue that by causing local inflation and driving people off their land, it has deepened their poverty.
9. They worry about the cyanide used to leach the gold out of the ore; they fear it has contaminated the water and is sickening their livestock.
10. There have been mass protests, including one in April 2003 that drew thousands of people to Cajamarcas main square.
Exercise 6. Refer to the text and complete the sentences below:
1. On June 2, 2000, a truck from the Yanacocha gold mine in northern Peru spilled 150 kilograms of mercury out of some
2. Other villagers were hired by the mine to clean up the spillbut were not provided with any...
3. Mercury can cause birth...
4. The spill affected an estimated 925 people; 400 of them were treated for mercury
5. The Newmont Mining Company, the US-based corporation and the World Banks International Finance Corporation (IFC), spent $12 to 14 million on the
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6. In exchange for agreeing not to sue the mine, some of the spill victims were offered small cash and medical...
7. Yanacocha is located high in the
8. The company also claims that it has created over 1,600 jobs in the area, and helped build...
9. They also worry about the condition of their...
10. The trout are...
11. They worry about the cyanide used the gold out of the ore; they fear it has the water and is sickening their livestock.
12. Many local residents, concerned about the risks of water , oppose the plan.
Exercise 7. Make dialogues. Discuss the problems connected with the mercuty spill and the impacts it made on peoples health.
Exercise 8. Retell the text.
TEXT 5. SURFACE MINING.
Surface mining is less expensive and safer than underground mining. About 90% of the rock and mineral resources mined in the United States and more than 60% of the nation's coal is produced by surface mining techniques. Coal mining accounts for about half of all surface mining, extraction of sand, gravel, stone, and clay for another 35%, phosphate rock for about 5%, and all metallic ores, for about 13%.
There are four kinds of surface mines: open-pit mines, strip mines, mountaintop mines, and alluvial (or placer) mines. Open-pit mines consist of deep cone-shaped holes or pits that are excavated in rock that is first loosened by blasting. In order to prevent the sides of the pit from collapsing, open-pit mines must be continually widened as they are deepened. Open-pit mines are used when the ore is of low grade, meaning that the amount of metal per cubic meter or kilogram of rock is small, and disseminated, meaning that the metals are distributed throughout large volumes of rock rather than being concentrated in veins. The size of open-pit mines, which often take decades to excavate, makes it uneconomical to reclaim the pits by filling them with rock.
Strip mines consist of shallow excavations, perhaps 109 yd (100 m) or less, that are used to mine tabular bodies of rock such as coal. Soil and rock above the mined material, known as overburden, are removed and set aside. Because the strip mines consist of shallow excavations, the overburden can be economically replaced, re-contoured to resemble the original topography, and replanted.
Mountaintop mining came into widespread use in Appalachian coal fields following the 1997 passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act by the United States Congress. Mountaintop mining is similar to strip mining in that the overburden above a tabular coal deposit is removed. Instead of being stockpiled and used to restore the original topography, however, the overburden is used to fill adjacent valleys. Although mountaintop mining is an inexpensive method of mining coal in mountainous areas, the filling of valleys can have negative environmental impacts. Mountain-top mining in West Virginia was halted by a court order in 2002 on the grounds that the practice violated the Clean Water Act, but changes to the act may again make the method legal.
Alluvial mining is a form of surface mining used to recover heavy minerals such as gold from sand and gravel beds, including stream beds, known as placer deposits. In some cases these deposits can be removed mechanically by agitating the sand and gravel in simple pans. A more sophisticated and efficient way of separating placer minerals from the sand and gravel is a sluice box, a long, shallow box with wooden separators placed along its bottom. As sand and gravel is shaken in the sluice box, lighter sand grains are washed away and heavier metals are left behind. A particularly destructive form of alluvial mining is hydraulic mining, in which pressurized water is used to wash away large amounts of sand and gravel. Dredges are used in other large-scale alluvial mining operations.
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Exercise 1. Translate the following words and word combinations from English into Ukrainian:
U nderground mining, rock and mineral resources, surface mining techniques, extraction of gravel, phosphate rock, open-pit mines, strip mines, mountaintop mines, and alluvial (or placer) mines, deep cone-shaped holes, blasting.
