New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

A successful extractive-minerals operation has always involved temporary storage of mine-mill by-products that can be reprocessed when economic conditions change and/or there is an advance in extractive technology. One generation's mine dump has often been the next generation's bonanza. Thus, a prudent mine mill operation involves intelligent management of and good records on the composition of mine dumps, ore stockpiles, and mill tailings. This long-term operating procedure of the minerals industry must be applied to a much broader segment of modern society, namely the urban, industrial, and intensive agricultural sectors of first-and second-world cultures.

The obscene mob scene of the Second Millennium and our throw away mentality should provide a wonderful opportunity for future inhabitants of this planet to live off the land (perhaps like Mad Max and friends in a Twenty-first Century desert scenario). I submit that we should make it easy for them, and possibly even for our near-future selves, to recover goodies from our landfills and other types of waste-disposal sites. This is a particularly valid option for dry landfill sites in arid and semiarid regions of the Southwest.

The hallmark of today's landfill operation is still chaotic mixture of waste rather than order and separation. Reprocessing and recycling are, unfortunately, still not economical and political realities in most areas. However, the impending "garbage" crisis of the 1990's may convince a large segment of society that it is prudent and actually economical to consider waste-disposal sites not only as dumps and scavenger heavens, but also as well-managed storage facilities for materials temporarily outside the commodity market. For example, I believe that if we would segregate enough (presently-unrecyclable) plastic containers or steel cans in a landfill cell, then someone would soon figure out an economic use for these materials.

In conclusion, I suggest that, if we play our cards right, we can turn a potential economic and environmental disaster into a sustainable and satisfying way of life. Furthermore, the geological and extractive-mineral communities can be key players in this process. These are exciting and bullish times for our profession. So let us all be good scouts and start trying to leave this campsite better than we found it; and by all means, we must avoid trashing our neighbor's property in any efforts to clean up our own.