Useful Science

Acid Mine Drainage • Climate Change • Fish • Human Health • Mine Reclamation • Toxics • Water Quality

Acid Mine Drainage

• Acid Mine Drainage in the Ambler Mining District (Pete Dronkers, 2012).  This pdf of a powerpoint presentation has an overview of acid mine drainage that is very easy to understand.  It also contains information specific to the Ambler Mining District.
• Acid Mine Drainage and Effects on Fish Health and Ecology: A Review  (Prepared by Reclamation Research Group, LLC, Bozeman, Montana for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage Fish and Wildlife Field Office, 2008)
• Acid Mine Drainage Prediction (EPA, 1994)  This technical document provides a brief review of acid forming processes at mine sites, a summary of the current methods used to predict acid formation, selected state regulatory requirements, and case histories.
  
• Hardrock Mining: Acid Mine Drainage (Earthworks factsheet, 2002)

Climate Change

• Climate Change – Extreme Conditions: Do Plans of Operations Need to Include an Ark? (R. David Williams, 2012).  This pdf of a powerpoint presentation looks at how climate change is affecting mining reclamation.

Fish

• Copper Effects on Freshwater Food Chains and Salmon: A Review by Carol Ann Woody
• Olfactory toxicity in fishes (Tierney, Baldwin, Hara, Ross, Scholz, and Kennedy, 2010).

Human Health

• Impacts of Metals on Aquatic Ecosystems and Human Health (Frances Solomon, 2008)
• Impacts of Copper on Aquatic Ecosystems and Human Health (Frances Solomon, 2009)
• Pollution and Cancer in Alaska (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, 2006)

Mine Reclamation

• clu-in.org is the EPA’s website about contaminated site clean-up information.  Although the website is very technical, it has information about mine site monitoring, remediation technologies, specific contaminants, and government clean-up and remediation programs.

Toxics

• The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry maintains a database of information about toxic substances.  It contains fact sheets and other information.
• EPA’S Toxics Release Inventory is a database containing data on disposal or other releases of over 650 toxic chemicals from thousands of U.S. facilities and information about how facilities manage those chemicals through recycling, energy recovery, and treatment.
• Toxipedia is a free toxicology encyclopedia offering articles and resources about toxic chemicals (such as pesticides and endocrine disruptors), health conditions, ethical considerations, the history of toxicology, laws and regulation, and more.

Water Quality

• A Case for the Development of Mercury Regulations for Alaska’s Existing and Proposed Gold Mines (Breithaupt, 2009)
• Comparison of Predicted and Actual Water Quality at Hardrock Mines: The reliability of predictions in Environmental Impact Statements   (Kuipers, and Maest, 2006)
• Environmental Studies of Mineral Deposits in Alaska (US Geological Survey, 1996).  This report looks at the environmental impacts of mining different types of mineral deposits in Alaska.
• Predicting Water Quality at Hardrock Mines: A Failure of Science, Oversight, and Good Practice  (Septoff, 2006
• Watershed Contamination from Hard Rock Mining (US Geological Survey website).  This has an overview of different water quality issues that can arise from mining, as well as links to current and past USGS research.

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