RASHAE OPHUS JOHNSON - Daily Herald | Posted: Monday, January 30, 2006 11:00 pm
Fourth-graders across Utah Valley are learning in no uncertain terms about the hazards of abandoned mines.
The "Stay Out and Stay Alive!" abandoned mine safety program is mandatory learning melded into fourth-grade geology and state history curriculum. The Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining distributed to schools this week a teaching packet including a workbook, DVD and other instructional materials.
"We have 20,000 abandoned mines in Utah and no way to really close all of them," said Jim Springer, spokesman for the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining. "The best way we can improve safety is to educate, starting with children."
Lane Rienwand, fourth-grade teacher at Provost School in Provo, is priming students with lessons on the mining rush that helped settle Utah. Anne Larson, the school's other fourth-grade teacher, is gearing up with a geology unit on rocks and minerals.
"They love to get involved in rock hunting after our rock and mineral unit, and that brings them up into the canyon," Larson said.
Provost students live around Provo's east bench, and by fourth grade, Larson said many have begun independent exploration of nearby Rock Canyon. When she taught the abandoned mine safety lessons in previous years, several children already had noticed but not necessarily recognized abandoned mines.
"They say, 'We saw this hole and it had a big piece of wood over it,' " she said. "It looks like an innocent little hole to them, but it's not."
She believes the abandoned mine safety segment bears particular relevance this year, given several highly publicized recent mining tragedies plus the deaths last summer of four local spelunkers in a natural cave in the Provo foothills. Students learn the myriad of risks -- including collapsing walls and ceilings, toxic fumes, falls and undetonated explosives -- still looming in mines deserted decades ago. Larson also tells classes about a Boy Scout who was lost for days in an abandoned Utah mine several years ago.
Students are awed by a state map peppered with thousands of dots representing abandoned mines.
"It's impressive to see,'Whoa, we're talking about a lot more than a dozen mines here,' " she said.
Since the 1800s, miners have sought gold, silver, lead, zinc, phosphate, copper, uranium and several other minerals in Utah. After stripping one location, miners simply departed for another site, leaving behind piles of toxic waste and gaping shafts.
Public safety was a primary motivation for the federally funded reclamation program, which operates on a $1.5 million annual budget derived from coal taxes. Since the Utah Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program commenced in 1983, state authorities have sealed roughly 7,000 abandoned mines statewide, including 105 in the Uinta National Forest.
Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service experts currently are collaborating with oil, gas and mining officials on a mine reclamation project in the Sheeprock Mountains west of Provo.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.