Wanted to share an excerpt of an interview from OnEarth Magazine with geochemist and hydrogeologist Robert Moran who has crisscrossed the globe studying the impact of mining on water, both below and above ground:
You used to consult for big mining companies, and now you’re consulting for the nonprofits fighting against them. How did that happen?
It’s a kind of natural progression you see in a lot of scientists. As you mature, you look a bit more carefully at the consequences of what you’re doing. When I said controversial things about projects I was working on, the companies would put them in reports and lock them in a safe somewhere, and they’d never see the light of day. I got tired of that. It was clear that the public-interest side was being outgunned time after time. So I did make a conscious effort to switch sides…
We hear a lot these days about a growing world water crisis. How is mining related to that?
In much of the world, companies are given access to water for their industrial processes free of charge. They may pay for pipelines and so on, but the commodity, the water itself, has no cost. That will have to change. Water should be controlled as a collective resource, not as private property, and societies are going to have to put a true market price on the industrial use of water that factors in the real cost of its depletion and contamination.
Click here for the whole article.
ed the globe studying the impact of mining on water, both below and above ground:
You used to consul t for big mining companies, and now you’re consulting for the nonprofits fighting against them. How did that happen?
It’s a kind of natural progression you see in a lot of scientists. As you mature, you look a bit more carefully at the consequences of what you’re doing. When I said controversial things about projects I was working on, the companies would put them in reports and lock them in a safe somewhere, and they’d never see the light of day. I got tired of that. It was clear that the public-interest side was being outgunned time after time. So I did make a conscious effort to switch sides…
We hear a lot these days about a growing world water crisis. How is mining related to that?
In much of the world, companies are given access to water for their industrial processes free of charge. They may pay for pipelines and so on, but the commodity, the water itself, has no cost. That will have to change. Water should be controlled as a collective resource, not as private property, and societies are going to have to put a true market price on the industrial use of water that factors in the real cost of its depletion and contamination.
Click here for the whole article. 
