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**scoundrel** · May 6th, 2018, 08:26 AM

On a slightly less depressing note, I noticed something this week which may offer part of the much needed path forward for a better future in a world which is going to be much more crowded and much harder to keep environmentally clean with so much human activity and exploitation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-43961898

Heavy metal contamination of the environment by human activity is nothing new. I remember being on a school trip to the Pennine hills above Wharfedale and walking along the banks of a small beck (stream) and through a cutting in the hills. There were large mounds of mine waste near the beck, still innocent of grass, which had been there for hundreds of years. The place was a former lead mine, worked by hand since at least Roman times but abandoned hundreds of years ago. There was a token human presence, noticeable only by the sight of a single diesel generator, because there is fluorite to be found in the old mineshafts and in the piles of waste, and fluorite has a commercial value nowadays. But the teachers firmly warned us not to drink the water anywhere in these hills because:

You can get liver flukes from the water due to all the sheep in the area.
There is liable to be toxic heavy metal pollution from the various lead mines, even though none of them has been worked for hundreds of years.

There are already various ways available to treat heavy metal pollution in water, but none of them are cheap. Usually, private commercial enterprises don't want to pay for something which doesn't directly generate profits and much more often than not they will dump untreated toxic water into the river network to save money. They risk punishment but generally get away with it.

The advantage of a cheap and portable solution such as the one in the BBC story is that, if it is cheap enough, easy enough to install and really does the job, then it changes the cost-benefit equation. Private commercial enterprises don't really want to risk being subjected to punitive sanctions and bad publicity, but will do it to avoid the costs of conventional water treatment if these are too expensive. If the costs are low and there is a benefit to be had in terms of risk management and potentially good publicity from being able to demonstrate that they are environmentally responsible, a lot of private mining enterprises will be rather interested, even in the USA where people far too often couldn't care less about the environment - unless there there is something in it for them.

Cheapness and ease of installation will be critical if this new idea is going to become widespread, but it is easy to see the potential. It might even be possible to use solar or hydro-electric power sources in conjunction and save petrol or diesel on running the process, both cleaner air and cheaper bottom line cost.

There is an awful lot of contaminated water out there just waiting for a flash flood to force it out of storage ponds into the drinking water supply. This new technique could be seriously good news for our future.

May 6th, 2018, 08:26 AM	#34539
scoundrel Super Moderator Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: England Posts: 26,239 Thanks: 162,401 Thanked 278,503 Times in 26,184 Posts	Clean water? On a slightly less depressing note, I noticed something this week which may offer part of the much needed path forward for a better future in a world which is going to be much more crowded and much harder to keep environmentally clean with so much human activity and exploitation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-43961898 Heavy metal contamination of the environment by human activity is nothing new. I remember being on a school trip to the Pennine hills above Wharfedale and walking along the banks of a small beck (stream) and through a cutting in the hills. There were large mounds of mine waste near the beck, still innocent of grass, which had been there for hundreds of years. The place was a former lead mine, worked by hand since at least Roman times but abandoned hundreds of years ago. There was a token human presence, noticeable only by the sight of a single diesel generator, because there is fluorite to be found in the old mineshafts and in the piles of waste, and fluorite has a commercial value nowadays. But the teachers firmly warned us not to drink the water anywhere in these hills because: You can get liver flukes from the water due to all the sheep in the area. There is liable to be toxic heavy metal pollution from the various lead mines, even though none of them has been worked for hundreds of years. There are already various ways available to treat heavy metal pollution in water, but none of them are cheap. Usually, private commercial enterprises don't want to pay for something which doesn't directly generate profits and much more often than not they will dump untreated toxic water into the river network to save money. They risk punishment but generally get away with it. The advantage of a cheap and portable solution such as the one in the BBC story is that, if it is cheap enough, easy enough to install and really does the job, then it changes the cost-benefit equation. Private commercial enterprises don't really want to risk being subjected to punitive sanctions and bad publicity, but will do it to avoid the costs of conventional water treatment if these are too expensive. If the costs are low and there is a benefit to be had in terms of risk management and potentially good publicity from being able to demonstrate that they are environmentally responsible, a lot of private mining enterprises will be rather interested, even in the USA where people far too often couldn't care less about the environment - unless there there is something in it for them. Cheapness and ease of installation will be critical if this new idea is going to become widespread, but it is easy to see the potential. It might even be possible to use solar or hydro-electric power sources in conjunction and save petrol or diesel on running the process, both cleaner air and cheaper bottom line cost. There is an awful lot of contaminated water out there just waiting for a flash flood to force it out of storage ponds into the drinking water supply. This new technique could be seriously good news for our future. __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.