By LEON M. SILER
The heops
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f "toilings" piled up ond up ot Ihc Kingt Mountain Mice Company in earlier yeor», bclorc
the company reduced its tailings loss from 95 percent to 5 percent, following suggestions of the
Mincrols Research Laboratory. Incidentally, the Kings Mountain Company sold screrol thousand tons
of send from these accumulated toilings for use in building Interstate 85 through the Kings Mountain
area.
What Can You Do
With “Tailings”?
What once were waste materials and
pollutants are now being put to some
very practical uses.
They arc making parking lots in and
around Ihc Western North Carolina
mining town of Spruce Pine these days
out of waste material, or “tailings."
from the Mitchell County commun¬
ity’s feldspar mining enterprises, which
not many years ago were shoveling a
thousand tons of waste a day into the
long-suffering North Toe River.
At Kings Mountain, where a single
mining company from 1950 to 1960
heaped up great piles of waste at the
rate of 800 tons per day. or up to 95
percent of all the mica-bearing ma¬
terial it handled, waste has been re¬
duced to an insignificant 5 percent
through better mica recovery methods
and the salvage of ingredients for new
products.
In Beaufort County, the Texas Gulf
Sulphur Company is filling a 700-acre
pond with "slimes” and low grade gyp¬
sum, which arc among the byproducts
of its phosphate mining, and is separat¬
ing sand from the rest of the waste
and returning it to the excavation from
which the phosphate ore originally
came. It may take a long time, but
the pond eventually will dry up and
become, perhaps, a subdivision.
Still Some Scars
These arc somewhat, at least, en¬
couraging developments in North
Carolina “open pit" mining activities
toward lessening the damage heretofore
done to the looks and the future values
of the mining country landscapes; en¬
couraging. that is, from the viewpoint
of those who think unrestrained exploi¬
tation of our landscapes is in need of
curbing.
The problem of open pit mines and
their "tailings” hasn't been completely
solved, by any means. They’re still re¬
lieving mountains of their sides up in
the Spruce Pine vicinity. A lot of great,
gaping holes remain in the ground
where mica or feldspar ore was re¬
moved in years gone by. And there
have been reports that in a northwest¬
ern section of the State, plans for a
strip-mining venture might get under
way.
Holes in comparatively level land
conceivably can be filled eventually,
and the land restored to something ap¬
proaching its original appearance, but
it will always be very difficult, to say
the least, to restore the side of a moun¬
tain.
Research Lab Helps
The Minerals Research Laboratory
of the University of North Carolina,
located on Coxc Avenue in Asheville,
has been doing its best to help. The
laboratory, dating from 1946, has put
numerous mining companies on the
right track to the alleviation if not the
solution of "tailings" troubles. In doing
so it has made substantial contribu¬
tions to the goal of conserving and en¬
hancing the over-all value of the State’s
mineral resources; of getting the most
from the least consumption of the land
on which we live.
Economic considerations cannot, of
course, be disregarded in any debate
over mining practices.
In the vicinity of Spruce Pine, three
companies arc active in feldspar min¬
ing. and they produce half of the feld¬
spar — an important ingredient of
glassware and ceramic products —
produced in the entire United States.
Feldspar comes mixed with quartz
and mica in a granite-like rock called
alaskitc in the mountains around
Spruce Pine. They mine it by dyna-
Corroll Roger», mining e>ecutivc, poid $10.000
for the privilege of filling one of the old coritie»
in Spruce Pine. He’» moking a porkmg lot oul
of il for the new hospital. — (Leon Siler photo.)
THE STATE. JULY 1. 1970
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