Paul Gemmill (1907-1992) grew up in a mining family, whose travels for work took them to California, Nevada and Mexico. Gemmill attended the University of Nevada, graduating from the Mackay School of Mines, and he worked in many different capacities in the mining industry, ranging from a mining engineer to the general manager of Combined Metals to executive secretary of the Nevada Mining Association. Gemmill was interviewed by Mary Ellen Glass in 1974 through 1975. Well, we're still on this problem that the mining industry has, particularly concerning the environmental aspects, which have added a tremendous cost to any new operation just to comply with the air quality, water quality, and the bonding that they say has to be put up to restore the mine property after you mine in it. And they're still going on the assumption that, when you mine, the mine is depleted and should be restored to its original state. The mineral's not there anymore, so land should be restored. Well now, this has some validity in mining a particular bed of coal somewhere that you can reach with a strip mine. It has a lot of validity in that case. But in the metal mines, it's not true. The old mine is the best place to start looking for the next reserve, and if you destroy the evidence of the diggings that are already there, you've destroyed the major part of evidence that would be used to find the next ore body. It is especially true here in Nevada that because of market conditions and the price of the precious metals, the old mining camps have not received, over a period of from thirty-five to forty years, the attention that they would have if prices were higher. Now [1978] we have prices coming up to somewhere around the parity price area [where a profit can be made], and these old camps are getting a fresh look. And if the mines had been obliterated some way or other and the evidence destroyed, it would be far more complicated to have a fresh look. So that's wrong in the metal mining business to require obliteration, calling it restoration, but that shows just how public pressure becomes misdirected, and it isn't anything but that. It's just ignorant public pressure. |