Thomas Rinaldi

Thomas Rinaldi, born in Santa Cruz, California, in 1956, received a degree in mining engineering from the University of Arizona. He has worked in the mining industry for many years, and at the time of the 1996 interview, Rinaldi was general manager of Mineral Ridge Resources, Inc. in Silver Peak overseeing the planning process for an open-pit gold-mining operation. Rinaldi was interviewed by Victoria Ford in 1996.

The decision for open-pit versus underground mining in the Silver Peak area is solely an economic decision. Today we have much larger machines, and it’s much more cost effective to move material than it was back at the turn of the century or in the 1930s. Technology is continually improving, and with those improvements the cost of moving material goes down. Now today, as in the early days, we want to move the least amount of waste possible and primarily move ore. Back in the 1930s and the turn of the century, they probably moved five tons of ore for every ton of waste they mined. Now we’re going to be moving four tons of waste for every ton of ore we’re mining. But we can move it at such a cost-effective rate compared to back in the 1930s that it is still more cost-effective to have a large open pit than to try and mine it underground. Underground mining is still very expensive compared to open-pit methods.