Seattle's Far Reach for Resources

Will and I headed east across the mountains via the passes over the North Cascades on Highway 20. Just west of Newhalem, I took this picture of the electric transmission lines that connect the Upper Skagit River hydroelectric projects with the electrical grid.

The upper Skagit hydroelectric projects are operated by Seattle City Light. Far sighted Seattle leaders looked far and wide for resources to support the city well into the future. Seattle's drinking water source is far from the city in the Cascade Range and is gated and guarded to protect the resource. Seattle also recognized very early the importance of electric power and sought out sites for hydroelectric energy far from the city. The upper Skagit was one of two major hydro electric projects the city developed - the other was even further away on the Pend Oreille River in the northeast corner of the state.

Seattle's foresight in a manner established the city as the great city of of the Northwest. The dams on the upper Skagit are in Whatcom County. I have sometimes referred to Seattle City Light as the great colonial empire of Washington State as they managed to tap into resources for their own use from areas far from the city. The foresight of Seattle leaders over a century ago regarding drinking water, electricity, port facilities and rail roads has played a profound role in the shaping of Washington State. Seattle leaders showed some short sighted views regarding transit. They waited a very long time to develop public transit systems and that delay has added substantially to the costs of the projects now moving forward. Makes one wonder about which communities have foresight today and what we should be thinking about in terms of the future.  

Road Work and Construction Aggregate

Gravel mine for road project

After my post on the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana berkely-pit-butte-montana it is worth considering another resource society demands - gravel aggregate. When I was taking classes on economic geology, my professor pointed out that while we students were excited about finding gold, copper, diamonds, oil, coal or any number of things that glitter or can be burned, there was money to be made investigating gravel. It was a resource in high demand everywhere.

To put gravel into perspective: Peabody Energy recently submitted the winning bid for mining a coal deposit in the Powder River Basin of northern Wyoming with a bid of $0.95 per mineable ton. A mineable ton of gravel in western Washington will typically be on the order of $1.50 with some variability due to location and a range of quality. Of course getting to the coal seam requires stripping of many tons of rock per every ton of coal.  

In my case as a geologist it turns out that exploration and assessment of aggregate (gravel) and bedrock for construction has dwarfed my explorations for metals. My metals work has been limited to providing interpretations of the geology of deposits someone else already found in order to inform further explorations that was then done by others. I should add in most cases my interpretations were such that they could be termed bad news for the potential for further rich finds.

The gravel mine pictured above is a classic road construction mine. A source for road material was required for the specific project, and if a source could be found near the project, a lot of tax dollars would be saved on construction costs. Hence, a thin gravel unit close to the site became attractive even though it was otherwise not a particularly noteworthy deposit.

What if a nearby deposit could not be found? One solution would be to pay a lot more for hauling material from a distant source or alternatively redesign the project so that a lot less aggregate material is required, or design the project so that otherwise poor quality material could be used. This is typical work for road engineers and work that geologists are sometimes called upon to support. For the road project pictured above, a source of material was available very near the proposed road construction site. 

A Patch of Ponderosa in the Wheat

Wheat fields north of U.S. Highway 2 east of Wilbur, Washington

A fairly large area of eastern Washington is treeless. This is of course because parts of eastern Washington have yearly rain fall well under 10 inches. Irrigation has turned some portions of the previously treeless land to crop land including stands of trees (orchards). But large swaths of eastern Washington is non irrigated wheat as pictured above. The wheat land has pushed into areas that have enough rain to support trees without irrigation. I have to remind myself not to equate dry land wheat with desert.

Patch of ponderosa pines near Wilbur, Washington

Tree covered areas are located along areas of Highway 2 when the ground gets rocky and is not suitable for crops. Trees also cover the steeper slopes of a few of the bluffs near Creston. A few miles north of Wilbur on the north slopes above the deep Columbia River valley the slope it is moist enough to support Douglas fir.  

In a number of areas where there is enough water to support trees along the outer edge of the true desert in eastern Washington, there has been extensive tree planting such that there are far more trees today than a few decades ago. Hence, the appearance of the eastern Washington landscape is changing based on commercial value of wood, fire control, and public and private desire for areas with trees. For some reason the generations of farmers that own the land pictured above decided they liked having that patch of trees. Perhaps they valued the shade provided for a break during the hard work of harvest.  

Notes from the Plains: Mutual Destruction

On many occasions while traveling on the plains of the northern United States I have observed small areas enclosed within barbed wire topped chain link fences accessed by a gravel road. Within the fenced area there are a few poles and posts and some ground hugging structures. These small fenced enclosures contained a nuclear warhead with the explosive force of roughly 25 to 50 times the Hiroshima atom bomb. The warhead or warheads (some have three) sit on top of a missile capable of hitting a target in Russia in a matter of minutes. There were and still are hundreds of these sites on the plains.

Deactivated missile site, North Dakota

Active missile site (?) Montana

So when I saw the missile site above in the green fields in North Dakota I recognized it as such. But then realized that an historic sign marker was posted on the road near the entrance. That was a first. I turned back and was able to walk into the site without setting off alarms. The missiles in this part of North Dakota have been removed, but this site was preserved for historic purposes. The brown/golden fields in the second picture is a still active missile site.

The site had lots of informative signs and I learned that lonely soldiers were not sitting underground with the missiles waiting for a call and codes to fire the missile. It was all done from a distance with an elaborate and very clever security system. One could crank the missile silo manhole entrance part way open although a steal cable prevented full opening.
 

Josh Ritter: The Temptation of Adam

Folds and Beer

When I began my blog experiment with notes and observations on the Washington landscape along with a few occasional deviations such as the recent posts on Butte and hail on the plains, I found that there is a community of sorts of other geology bloggers. I check up on AGU blogs including Callen Bentley's Mountain Beltway every week of so. Callen recently completed a year of posting what he calls Friday Fold friday-fold with pictures of folds both small and large. Will and I were traversing through an area of granite injections with gneiss/migmatites inbetween and along the margins and I saw this nice little folded pegmatite vein in a block of gneiss.   

After a rather long hard physical day, I took advantage of being located near one of my favorite beers, and I would note that highway8a.blogspot (Looking for Detachment), another blog I check up on routinely includes beer pictures.

1554 at the end of long day

After today I head back to the lonely country.

Notes from the High Plains: Hail Destruction

Will and I were driving through lush farm land of corn and soy when suddenly the lush fields ended. Initially I was trying to figure out what the new crop was or if we had crossed some geologic boundary of poor soil, but then I noticed most of the trees were missing their leaves. Apparently 6 inches of hail had fallen just two days ago with hail the size of quarters. The width of the destruction was about three miles.

Earlier, we had seen this in another town:

Hail is not very common in Washington State. We simply do not have the atmospheric instability that causes such intense thunderstorms and hail. Had to feel bad for the farmers that lost their entire crop along the path of the storm.  

Berkeley Pit, Butte, Montana

There are likely a lot of geologists that would recognize the above pictures as the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana. My first visit to the pit was shortly after mining in the pit had ceased in the early 1980s. We made a visit to Butte, not for the geology but in order for an associate to get his boots repaired after and before looking at other geology sites. Since that time the lake in the pit has increased in size substantially.

Berkeley Pit is the dark lake in the center

Active open pit mining is located on the upper right and

the tailings pond for the active mine is on the upper left

An initial reaction of revulsion to huge open pit mines filled with toxic waters is understandable. But most geologists and miners will point out that society demanded that we dig this big hole in the ground. Indeed, the very fact that you are reading this blog means that you are a consumer of the resources that placed a huge demand for getting copper out of the ground for use as an electric conductor as well as a huge variety of other uses.

Initially all the mining in Butte was done via multiple underground shafts mining along rich veins of copper. Butte was not a boom and bust mining town. There were dozens of rich copper ore veins and underground mining lasted for many decades and generated great wealth not only in Butte but in the United States. This rich mining history built a city that is unique for western U.S. cities, and the city now has a very large historic district that is well worth seeing. And I will add that down town Butte is in much better shape today than when I first visited in the early 1980s.

Open pit mining began in the 1950s as a result of the rich vein mining coming to an end, the high prices of copper (societal demand), and more efficient earth moving and ore processing. But there were serious trade offs to open pit mining. For one, the pit not only consumed a huge volume of rock but took out entire neighborhoods in the city. On the positive side, the pit was good for the local economy. Pit mining was also safer than underground mining at the time. Miners routinely died in the underground mines in Butte. There is a heart wrenching memorial to one particularly bad mining accident on the hill north of town.

In the 1950s when open pit mining began, societal views of and understanding of environmental damage was much different than today. Groundwater was pumped before entering the pit, but when mining ceased the pit began filling with water. The oxygen rich water reacts with the rocks creating sulfuric acid and leaching metals including arsenic. The Berkeley Pit and a variety of mine related sites has made Butte the largest and most expensive Superfund cleanup site in the United States. 

The current very high prices for copper is good news for Butte. Mining is continuing at a pit immediately to the east. And the high copper prices are good for the environment.With the high copper prices the cost of processing the toxic water has been substantially reduced because the water itself is full of copper. One report states that 400,000 pounds of copper are extracted from the pit water every month.  

Although the pit lake is very toxic, the lake in the pit is not dead. Over 167 species of bacteria and fungi have been identified. Figuring out how these critters live and function is ongoing and in the end the pit may save lives as chemicals extracted from some of the bacteria show great promise as cancer fighting agents http://mtstandard.

As distasteful as the pit may be, keep in mind that your using the products from the pit and perhaps a loved one or you yourself may be saved by the chemicals identified in the lake ecosystem. Our side trip to Butte was well worth the time.

Find out lots more at http://www.pitwatch.org.