Thomas Cahill, was born in Round Mountain in 1914, to a long-time mining family and spent his summers mining as he got older. He attended the University of Nevada’s Mackay School of Mines and after graduation lived a common miner’s life of moving from place to place every few years. His many jobs included assassying and mill construction for mercury mining, a brief stint at the Nevada Bureau of Mines, and working for Basic Refractories in Gabbs. Cahill was interviewed by Victoria Ford in 1999. In later years at the operation in Gabbs, we had to put in dust collectors in the processing area [to limit what was released from the site]. This is about the time that the EPA became a force in our lives, and we did spend a good many million dollars on dust collectors. We had two types—bag houses and electrostatic dust precipitators. In the bag house, the material that we collected as dust could be processed and used later, but unfortunately, we got no use at all out of the precipitated product—it was just pure waste. And looking at it from the dollar standpoint, the bag houses were money makers for us, almost, although they cost well over a million dollars. But the electrostatics didn’t give us anything, as I recollect, that was worthwhile collecting or that could be used. Were environmental regulations getting stiffer while you were at Gabbs? Oh, yes. They got a little bit worse every year. Personally, I approve of it. It’s something that had to come. We certainly needed it [the dust collectors] at Gabbs, but we didn’t do it as a result of being told to do it. We did it voluntarily, put in a dust collector and so forth. But I’ve attended a couple of EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and OSHA [Occupational Health and Safety Administration] hearings. I suppose I have a typical old-time miner’s feelings about regulation, except that I state once again that I believe it was long overdue. Regulation can hinder the mining? Oh, of course it can. Like in the particular industry I was in, it can raise your costs to the point where you’re no longer in a position to be competitive. But if it's damaging the environment, then you should take care of it, absolutely. Yes, there’s a tendency to overreact on both sides—on the side of industry and the side of regulation. That’s just one of the things that happens as a matter of course. |