#strip mining

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"Cobalt Red": Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces nearly three-quarters of the world's cobalt, an essential component in rechargeable batteries powering laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles. 

But those who dig up the valuable mineral often work in horrific and dangerous conditions, says Siddharth Kara, an international expert on modern-day slavery and author of _Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives_. 

In an in-depth interview, he says the major technology companies that rely on this cobalt from DRC to make their products are turning a blind eye to the human toll and falsely claiming their supply chains are free from abuse, including widespread child labor.

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Two former state and federal mining regulators say state and federal authorities should investigate the role strip mining played in last week’s devastating and deadly flooding in eastern Kentucky and the condition of the mines after the torrential rainfall.

The Kentucky counties, and areas of West Virginia and Virginia, flooded by torrential rains have for decades been heavily logged and strip-mined for coal—land-use practices that dramatically alter the landscape and contribute to flooding. The recent flooding has killed at least 37 people.

“If you get an area that has been strip mined, and the soil has been stripped off, and the upper layers of the soil and rock have been dumped into a valley fill, you have a surface that is not fully vegetated and you get no water retention whatsoever, and that is what causes these flash floods,” said Jack Spadaro, a former top federal mine-safety engineer who works as a consultant for coalfield residents, workers and their lawyers.

Randsell said that at a minimum, Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet officials and officials with the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement need to check on the condition of the mines, which could pose ongoing safety risks to people who live downstream from them from washouts, landslides or further flooding from damaged water retention ponds.

Beyond that, she said, a broader study could help regulators determine whether current mining practices and regulations are up to the challenge of climate change, which scientists say is causing heavier, more intensive rain storms.

In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in a 2017 study of the Ohio River basin,  predicted that climate change would bring more rain and significantly increased stream flows to a region that includes the coalfields of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia.

That year,  its lead author, Kathleen D. White, told The Courier Journal that it was already out of date and that climate change was accelerating faster than expected.