Trump's Economic Plan: Hydraulic Mining

These past few weeks, I've been talking about this trip through gold country that my wife and I took at the beginning of May. It was an enlightening and educational trip aside from the fact that it was just a lot of fun. I mean, I didn't even talk about how we made sourdough pancakes roughly based on the way miners' would have eaten them (evidently pancakes were kind of a thing because sourdough was fairly portable) or any of the other food we made (all amazing!) or any of the places we ate at. Of course, I also didn't talk about the mosquitoes, which reached a horrible peak the night we stayed at Indian Grinding Rock.

And I'm still not going to talk about any of that stuff:
1. Because I don't want to talk about the mosquitoes.
2. I don't have pictures of any of the food, and I probably wouldn't remember all the things anyway.

But I do want to talk some more about hydraulic mining and how Trump wants us to return to those days.

I mentioned that we stayed a couple of nights in a miners' cabin in North Bloomfield. North Bloomfield which now has a population of 8-12 (yes, that's actually what the sign said). However, at one point, North Bloomfield had a population of something in the 2000 range and was a "thriving" mining town. I say "thriving" because, obviously, it was only thriving via illusion. So let's talk about that...

The town of North Bloomfield was settled as a mining town, which means all of the industry there revolved around gold mining. Gold mining for "the Man." Let's just be clear about this, this was not a town settled by "small business" miners working for themselves and making a living at it. This was a town run by the North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company. The miners worked for them, and the miners made shit wages. The miners made shit wages while the owners of the mining company got rich. Super rich.

And remember, this is what the area looks like more than a century later:

Of course, at the time, none of the trees in the foreground were there. Everything below the treeline in  the background was wiped out by the hydraulic mining. Remember, this is a picture I took to be "attractive;" I didn't take any of what's left down in the canyon where it's still full of scummy water and piled rocks. Most of this area will never fully recover. [How do I know? Because there are similar areas to this where the Romans did the same kind of thing to gold mine more than 2000 years ago, and that land still hasn't recovered, either.]

But jobs, right? The destruction of this land supported the jobs and livelihood of 2000 people. But, you know, the government got involved and made hydraulic mining illegal and, so, today, North Bloomfield has a population of 8-12.

By Trump logic, though, we should strike down that regulation against hydraulic mining and put those miners back to work! Put them back to work making their shit wages so that the Mining Corporation could continue to get fat and rich (like a tick) off of them. But, you know, jobs!

Now, let's look at why the state of California stepped in and shut down hydraulic mining, because it wasn't because they wanted to flex some government muscles and put people out of work.

A view across some of the gravel piles and sparse vegetation on the edge of the "pit."

All of this hydraulic mining was happening up in the mountains, and it used a lot of water. "A lot of water" is an understatement. I'm talking about millions of gallons of water a day. All of the water and everything it carried with it went... down. Whole towns got covered in mud and rock and there was devastating flooding in the Sacramento valley, the most fertile area of California and, possibly, the whole United States, considering how much of the nation's food is grown here. Farms and lives were destroyed. Food that was being grown for broader consumption was destroyed so that a few corporation owners could get rich. And, you know, pay shit wages to their employees.

Some of what was coming out of the mountains even made it out into San Francisco Bay, causing even more environmental damage.

So, sure, there were 2000 people in this one town benefiting from the mining and a lot of those people had jobs related to the mining. And there were some other nearby towns that had jobs dependent upon the mining, like Lake City, which existed to upkeep one of the water reservoirs they used to power the water cannons.

But the environmental damage was extensive, to say the least, and the lives affected by the damage they mining corporation was causing was way more than 2000. Seriously, did you get the part where there were whole towns buried in mud due to the runoff from the mine? And entire seasons of crops were lost due to the flooding. So, yes, the State of California stepped in and made hydraulic mining illegal, but it wasn't without a legal fight because the corporation owners didn't want to quit. They didn't care about the damage they were causing because they were getting rich. Richer. They were getting more rich.

When hydraulic mining was made illegal, people moved away from North Bloomfield. Lake City doesn't even exist anymore. Yes, jobs were lost. Those people, though, went on to other things, because that's what you do. So, sure, jobs were lost, and I'm sure that was horrible for those people, especially the shop owners who suddenly no longer had enough business to stay open. But the net effect was tremendously for the good. Incalculably for the good.

Let's not mince words:

Trump's plan for coal, for bringing back coal mining jobs, is the same as if he came to California and made hydraulic mining legal again. There's still gold in them there hills. Billions of dollars worth. It wasn't a lack of gold that made people stop mining. It was the environmental cost.

And the environmental cost of coal is just as high. Climate change is real. The flooding and the droughts and the effects on our ability to produce crops is just as real as the flood waters and debris coming out of the Sierra Nevadas to cover the Sacramento plain and destroy... everything.

The best part is this:

He doesn't care about the jobs. He wants to pay shit wages, too. He's one of the corporation ticks wanting to suck you dry while he gets rich. And I hear you, "But Trump doesn't own coal mines!" (Actually, we don't know that since, you know, he won't release his tax returns.) Sure, Trump doesn't own any coal mines, but his buddies do, and, with them, it's all about scratching each others' backs.

Do I feel bad for the people who will and are losing their jobs because of the dying coal industry? Sure, I do. But I also believe the cost is too high to support the metaphoric 2000 jobs of a few miners at the expense of the rest of the world, because, yes, it is the rest of the world. For the moment, though, why don't you go to south Louisiana and talk to the folks there who are losing their coastline due to climate change. People who are having to move due to the destruction that other people are causing so that a few (a few!) can get rich. Richer. So that a few can get even more rich.

The monster in the mountain. (Doesn't it look like a Pac-Man ghost?)

Gold Country (part 3)

We spent two nights at Malakoff Diggins where we stayed in an actual miner's cabin that's still standing from sometime in the 1860-1880 range.

Yes, the chairs are new.

The cabin is located in what is left of the town of North Bloomfield which is located within Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park. They have camping, too, but staying in an actual miner's cabin was something we couldn't pass up.

And this... Well, this is a water cannon:

Hydraulic mining wasn't invented in Malakoff Diggins, but it really became a thing there. See, here's what happened:
You know how people thought during the gold rush that they were just going to "zip" over to California and find gold lying all over the ground and become rich? Of course, that wasn't true, but in Malakoff Diggins it was almost true. There was so much gold in the streams in the area that it took a couple of years for them to clean it all out. Except they realized there was always new gold in the streams after a rain, so they began searching around in the dirt, but that's hard work. Not that panning isn't hard work, but it's so much easier than digging around in the dirt. So someone asked the question: How do we get all of this dirt to the water so that we can sift all the non-gold away?

Which is where the water cannons came in. I'm not going to go into the whole process of hydraulic mining because the important part is that you aim the cannon at the mountain and wash everything down. Everything.

The bare rock, there, and everything below it was hydraulic mined. Prior to mining, the whole area was just like above the mining zone. All of the trees in the foreground are new growth from the last century, but let me make this clear: It's been more than 130 years since this happened, and the area still looks trashed.

Bear in mind, these are the "scenic"pictures, because I didn't take any pictures of the really horrible looking areas, because they were horrible looking. Of course, I wasn't thinking about this post at the time, or I would have.

All of this runoff caused problems. Lots of problems. Basically, it all ended up down around Sacramento and caused all kinds of flooding and damage. People weren't happy. Someone sued. It was one of the first, if not the first, environmental cases in American history, and the result was that in 1884 hydraulic mining was made illegal in the state of California.

Let me state again: It's been more than 130 years since hydraulic mining in the area of Malakoff Diggins was halted, and the land has still not recovered!

And I just want to point out that the kind of environmental regulation that Trump wants to do could very easily lead to more environmental disasters of this nature. Thousands of acres of farmland ruined every year on top of the destruction of some of the greatest wild areas of California. But, you know, if there's profit to be gained, Trump and his ilk don't care about any kind of destruction anyone else might face. Let the future deal with that. They're too old to care what kind of results there will be in 20-30 years.

Next time: More Malakoff Diggins, but only the pretty stuff.