Lutopan, officially known as DAS or Don Andres Soriano (from the name of the founder of the copper mines), is a hilly and well-populatedbarangay consisting of 21 sitios in Toledo City and is about 44 km from Cebu City, Philippines. In the 1960s through 1980s the place saw progress mainly through the Atlas Mining (ACMDC) operations, which closed down in 1991. It had a hospital facility comparable to those of Cebu City in terms of quality. It also has a La Salle-supervised private school (now Andres Soriano Memorial College) that used to be subsidized by the company.
http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Lutopan
http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Lutopan
Today, the famous large scale copper mining industry here is now experiencing massive floods, forest denudation, and other environmental problems which resulted in the disturbance of the fragile ecosystems in the community.
Here in this blog page, I would like to inform everybody, even those who are not living in Lutopan, Cebu, Philippines, the harmful effects of mining especially on the environment.
However, there are many positive effects on the economy of the country. Many of the minerals gathered are processed and and sold and makes a lot of money. The only problem is that most of these mining activities are too excessive and that people do not clean up after what they leave behind. This blog does not necessarily want to stop mining but to just balance and limit it.
Though these positive effects are very helpful for our economy right now, we will regret the negative effects to the environment because these will greatly affect us in the long run in the future. We will have a destroyed environment with no where to stay and have none to eat.
Like mentioned before, the problem is on the abuse and excessive mining in Lutopan that greatly affected our environment. Miners usually use means of deforestation to cut trees or break the land and soil where trees can grow to get in the richer areas of mineral ore. Ne of the means of breaking the soil is by using explosions and bombs. This emits a large amount of carbon dioxide in the air, making less clean oxygen in that area which also leads to a large amount of air pollution and smog. Mining also uses fossil fuels which like mentioned emits carbon dioxide which can cause air pollution. These fossil fuels are also very scarce important energy resources that are being used for mining. Lastly, mines have many wastes that leak out and destroys and pollutes nearby bodies of water and forests. For the case of a copper industry, copper leaks out to the environment. Though not really a threat directly for plants and animals, it is absorbed in soil which contaminates the plants animals eat which later on goes to us humans.
Not only is this harmful for the environment but mining in general is a very dangerous job for people. Such incident happened in Chille's copper mines. Based on BBC news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11467279, here is a graph of the deaths of people due to mining.
These people do not notice what they are doing to our environment. The money they are earning are only used to continue these harmful projects.
Now what can we do to help prevent further destruction? We have to ask the government and maybe even help them realize the negative effect of these to the environment so they can impose stricter laws on it. Miners need to clean up their waste and practice reforestation if they ever cut any trees. A normal person like us can support cleanup projects on mine drainages.
Let us save mother Earth as early as now and limit or bakance the mining in Lutopan!
Like mentioned before, the problem is on the abuse and excessive mining in Lutopan that greatly affected our environment. Miners usually use means of deforestation to cut trees or break the land and soil where trees can grow to get in the richer areas of mineral ore. Ne of the means of breaking the soil is by using explosions and bombs. This emits a large amount of carbon dioxide in the air, making less clean oxygen in that area which also leads to a large amount of air pollution and smog. Mining also uses fossil fuels which like mentioned emits carbon dioxide which can cause air pollution. These fossil fuels are also very scarce important energy resources that are being used for mining. Lastly, mines have many wastes that leak out and destroys and pollutes nearby bodies of water and forests. For the case of a copper industry, copper leaks out to the environment. Though not really a threat directly for plants and animals, it is absorbed in soil which contaminates the plants animals eat which later on goes to us humans.
Not only is this harmful for the environment but mining in general is a very dangerous job for people. Such incident happened in Chille's copper mines. Based on BBC news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11467279, here is a graph of the deaths of people due to mining.
These people do not notice what they are doing to our environment. The money they are earning are only used to continue these harmful projects.
Now what can we do to help prevent further destruction? We have to ask the government and maybe even help them realize the negative effect of these to the environment so they can impose stricter laws on it. Miners need to clean up their waste and practice reforestation if they ever cut any trees. A normal person like us can support cleanup projects on mine drainages.
Let us save mother Earth as early as now and limit or bakance the mining in Lutopan!
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