The Hardness of Steel

Steel is a mystery. Essential to our psyche and civilization, it is perhaps our most useful invention, as well as the third largest industrial cause of climate change. Its myriad properties which enable that usefulness are due to its endless formulations, which have evolved with us.
Molybdenum is one of the minerals which give steel its hardness, but the quantities used are so small that the demand is limited, causing an oscillating demand, which has prompted the mining industry to mine it only periodically.
One such mine in my list of interests, is on Copper Mountain, southwest of Denver.
Also on my list to shoot are two power plants that are among the 100 largest CO2 and mercury emitters in the USA. This group of attractions, in combination with an exhibit in Denver and lecture invitation, suggested a photo flight.


Lighthawk is a group of pilots that fly for the environment, and are frequent partners in my work. Their pilot Stephanie Wells agreed to the mission, and I laid out a flight plan, which Stephanie modified with her local knowledge and experience of high altitude flying, an exacting experience set combing science, local knowledge, skill, aerodynamics, and the knowledge of her aircraft. The steel would have to wait.


We agreed to go west to the power plant at Craig, CO, the 51th largest CO2 emitter in the USA, which is also near several coal mines, one deep below ground, the other on the surface.

Trees affected by bark beetle in Colorado Rockies

Much of the success of  these projects comes from predicting and praying for the right weather, and we had luck on our appointed day. For a coast native that studies those regions, the mountains held a novel fascination- what Stephanie saw as normal was unique and beautiful to me as we crossed the “Front Range” as the mountains closest to Denver are called.



The first environmentally interesting site, a deep coal mine, had not been on my plan, but with an abiding curiosity to see these things and how they work, we circled, before moving on the the power plant at Craig. So as not to seem like a sinister character, cautious pilots limit the number of circles they will make around a power plant. We agreed to pan around it once, circle the nearby mine, and pass by again on the way back to the nearby airfield for fuel, (Stephanie had flown with a minimum for the mountain crossing) and then pass the plant again on our way to the open-pit mine. Power plants are often rather ugly affairs, and this one is no exception, being all stacks, boilers, and turbines enclosed in a utilitarian building.

Coal-fired power plant. 51th largest CO2 emitter in the USA

Open-pit mines use drill rigs to make holes which are “charged” with ammonium nitrate to blast away the dirt (overburden) covering the object of the mine (in this case coal). The overburden is scooped and dumped to the side by a giant walking “dragline”.
After one pass around the mine, Stephanie expressed nervousness about our fuel level, so we went back to tank up from a charismatic old Coloradan gentleman at the tiny air strip (sadly, I left the cameras in the plane). As we took off again, a giant cloud filled the distant sky, and we reasoned it was a blast at the mine, probably executed after everyone left for lunch, due to the danger of flying rock. Still, it was a sight I was disappointed to miss.

Compressor trucks, well-heads and chemical tanks at fracking site

Hydro-fracking has been a controversial gas extraction technique around the world, and Colorado is no exception. Between the close proximity to houses and schools, and the regional scarcity of water, a resource mightily depleted by this process, local people were organizing in opposition to the industry near their homes, and I was asked to get the bird’s eye view. So we came down from the mountains and out to the plains around Boulder to find the sites, and they proved to be a textbook series of illustrative examples of the process. Hydro-fracking is also a rather ugly business, visually as well as its side-effects. A giant drill makes a deep and meandering hole, then leaves to make room for a group of large, powerful compressors which pump that bore full of water and chemicals at excruciating pressure, endeavoring to fracture the gas-bearing layer of rock below.

Factory farm for cattle

I have many topics of abiding interest, and never know when opportunity might arise to further those stories, and I was quite pleased to see large factory farms of beef cattle just on the other side of the fracking sites. Beef is the most climate-change intensive of foods– and, one hamburger requires upwards of 8,000 gallons of water to produce, this in a water-challenged region.


The day really seems a smashing success, even if we did not make it to see the steel, and both pilot and artist were glad to get back on the ground and run to the head.

Partners

No battles are fought alone, least of all mine. Aside from the fantastic team that works with me on a daily basis, there are the resource partners, and the project-specific partners. In the former category are the environmental groups, engineers, scientists, and lawyers that give me background and breaking developments on the various issues on which I'm working. So much of my work depends on information: technical details about the industries and the specific public health issues related to each, and changes in technologies that affect them. There are images for which there is no explanation, which leads to a mystery needing diagnosis, and others for which the obvious explanation does not quite fit. And there are the legislative angles: looming battles in which the friends of polluting industries are subversively working to enact or repeal laws for special interests that will significantly undermine public health.

Some of the most important partners are the pilots that volunteer their time, expertise, and equipment, most notably SouthWings, LightHawk, and Motorfluggruppe Grenzland. Recently, after an exhibit in Amsterdam, a Dutchman named Leo Westerkamp called asking if there might not be a project for which he would be essential. As Germany was next on the itinerary, a revisit to the giant open-pit brown coal mines at Garzweiler seemed to be in order.

So many have questioned my grip on the slippery concept called reality, that it's rare for me to doubt another's grip must mean they are in an extreme. Leo flies a kite. With a big fan. In the winter. Somehow I let him talk me into it.

I had to run from my exhibit at Flo Peters Gallery back down to Nürnberg to teach at Städtische Berufsoberschule für Sozialwesen, and we agreed that I would then train it up to Dormagen where he would meet me. On the internet I located rooms at Nikolaus Kloster for a reasonable rate where we were blessed by the Pater. The next morning broke clear and blue, but a little windy. Turns out the kite can only fly in very still air. So we spent much of the day driving around through the ghost towns slated for demolition prior to removal from existence for access to the coal below.

This woman was one of the last residents of Frimmersdorf, but in true German pride, was still sweeping the street in front of her house. Finally, the wind subsided enough to allow flight, but only for an hour plus before sunset.

On each flight, I usually find at least one answer, and in this case it was the disposal of the ash from the trio of power plants fed by the mine. Regular readers of this rant (and other properly concerned citizens) know too well about coal ash and its threats to our health.

As I suspected, the lovely power provider in question is dumping it right back in the mine, unlined from the water table, thus allowing the lead, arsenic, uranium mercury, selenium et al found therein to leach into the groundwater. Glad I don't live near there.

When doing these projects, the faithful, ancient GPS always accompanies, and a quick mark of the point of departure seems a sensible precaution. Nothing like a trail of bread crumbs. As the sun was setting and the cold intolerable, I called for home, and Leo averred that he had it under control. In good faith, I allowed him to set the direction, but always the dubious, I cast a glance at my bread crumbs, which oddly went the other way. Upon query, Leo assured me all was under control, but when the mine appeared through the haze in front of us, I knew that my suspicions, though founded on crumbs, were credible. Visions of spending the night in some field huddled next to Leo, wrapped up in his giant kite were not comforting. Fortunately, Mr. Magellan, old as he is, guided us straight back to the air field, though I could hardly get off the kite when we finally bumped to a halt.

The Letter From Green Mountain - Part II

03 December 09

When they asked me to come teach for a week, I suggested that, apart from the classes and lectures, we should take a photographic field trip. Green Mountain College is adjacent to the Adirondacks, and not far from several sites I have documented from the air: Tahawus - an old lead mine, most of which is owned by OSI; Republic Steel - an abandoned mill; IP Paper Mill in Ticonderoga. LightHawk had flown me over these locations last year, which led to a great story in the Adirondack Explorer; still I have always wanted to see these sites from the ground. The weather did not look promising, so we postponed our trip from Saturday to Sunday, and, of course Saturday I came down with the flu. But, there was no way I was going to miss this trip, so I climbed in the van at 5 AM on Sunday, wheezing and whining along the way, which the students all took with magnanimous aplomb. Tahawus, our first site, is in the middle of the high peaks, and involved quite a bit of map study, GPS shaking, and wrong turns. We finally ended up at the actual mines, where a somewhat churlish fellow in old overalls with a can of spray paint in hand informed us that this was not part of the OSI parcel, and no trespassing was allowed. He did not even succomb to the southern accent, so we turned around and navigated to the OSI holdings, which included the old town. There are some really interesting dilapidated buildings, and the students were all over it, but the fever was taking over and I passed out in the van. After a few hours and a bit of meandering, we moved to what I think was an old forge, a large stone oven/chimney with some other graphically interesting decaying metal. I’m always fascinated by these relics and curious about the story behind them.


Sadly, though it was the middle of the day, a lone bat circled the cairn endlessly. The students had all moved on and a couple arrived, the female evincing unease at the despondent presence of the winged mammal. I just wanted to cry thinking there could be no more perfect symbol for a world out of balance and wobbling, like the bat’s erratic flight, toward disaster.

At this point, students with obligations had to motivate for a return to the school while the rest of us proceeded on to Republic Steel, our next destination. Located in Port Henry, this defunct mill fascinated me from the air with its Victorian factory and rusted conveyors climbing dirty white mountains of waste slag. Alas, my fever was rising, so my energy for scrabbling up the mountains, which had a texture like fine sand, was minimal. Ruins of industrial sites, and the progress of the organic world to resorb them intrigue me. Our orientation of profit over planet generates many of them, relics of fashion or depleted resources. Some are highly toxic, some picturesque, others just an eyesore. This one was spectacular, a memento of an industrial age in the USA that we have shipped offshore, thanks to globalization. No longer will the piles of slag sully our shores and contaminate our workers: there are other lands out of sight with resources to burn, workers to carcinate, water to pollute. The day was late, and the clouds that had momentarily parted for a respite had come down so they engulfed the tops of the slag heaps. Time to race back to the school before the cafeteria closed…