El medio ambiente en la minería

EL MEDIO AMBIENTE EN LA MINERIA 72 Congress at the time tbe Iaws were enacted. The intent oC our laws and regulations is to provide tbe population with tbe assurance of environmental proteetion. The tooIs to assure compliance range from peIluasion to punish– ment to varying degrees. Media-specific measures tend toward trying to affeet improvement on a broad front witb a broad enforcement strategy designed to encourage compliance by aU industries and aU sizes oC operationswithin ~bose industries. Punishment of offenders is generalIy reserved Cor tbe worSt case examples. Industry-specific approaches such as SMCRA tend toward a more aggressive enforcement posture. They are framed witb a knowledge of tbe specific practices of a given industry and can focus more specifieally on knowing offenders. IV. THE PROBLEMS OF TOE PAST It is probably axiomatic that any countrywitb a bistory of industrial operations wiIl bave a legacy of environmental problems. The problem of past mineral production is a subset of tbis issue. M~tal mining environmentª,- problems are generally associatedwith past disposal of liquid and solidwastes tbat nowleaeh heavy metaIs into surface and ground waters. This b,e¡;tVy metal proble~5(ln be severe. These metaIs can.be acutely tone and 'YíJl.. Ilot "goaway" until the source is treated to remove tbem from tbe environiij~nt. If the problem is severe and tbe source operation is still in business, tbe normal practice in the U. S. is to require the operator to corroo the problem through tbe use of the enforcement provisions of one of tbe relevant statutes. When the originator of tbe problem is no longer in business•. otber tcchniques are employed. The basic problem is tbat of obtaining tbefinancial resources for such a cleanup operation. One approacb used in the U. S. is that embodied in SMCRA in which a tax is levied on eaeh ton of coaI produced to. provide resources foc the correetion oC problems ereated byeligible abandoned mines. With a sufficiently large and healtby industrial base, a relativelymodest tax can yield significant revenues 10 fund reelamation oC abandoned properties with little extemal competitive disadvantage to the industry and mínimal íntra-ín– dustry efIects. An altemative approach, and one tbat bas caused significant debate and controversywithin tbe U. S. is that used by the Comprebensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Recovery Act (CERCLA) or, as it is more com– monly known, tbe Superfund Acl The approaeb used under tbis lawaIso starts witb a general fund, in tbis case based on a tax on tbe cbemical industry. It departs from tbe SMCRA approacb by virtue of its far more aggressive efforts