Ron's Log

Black Diamond Mine

This past Saturday, I went with Bill and Emrys to see the Black Diamond Mine which is in Black Diamond Mine Regional Park in Antioch, California.

Coal Mining

From the 1860s through the turn of the century, five coal mining towns thrived in the Black Diamond area: Nortonville, Somersville, Stewartville, West Hartley and Judsonville. As the location of California's largest coal mining operation, nearly four million tons of coal ("black diamonds") were removed from the earth. The residents of the mining towns were from all over the world, and their life was characterized by hard work and long hours. Occasional celebrations and a variety of organizations and social activities served to alleviate the drudgery of daily existence.

The coal mines had a significant impact on California's economy. By the time operations ceased due to rising production costs and the exploitation of new energy sources, much of California's economy had been transformed from a rural to an industrial base.

Sand Mining

In the 1920s underground mining for sand began near the deserted Nortonville and Somersville townsites. The Somersville mine supplied sand used in glass making by the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company in Oakland, while the Nortonville mine supplied the Columbia Steel Works with foundry (casting) sand. Competition from Belgian glass and the closing of the steel foundry ended the sand mining by 1949. Altogether, more than 1.8 million tons of sand had been mined.

The public tour goes only 400 feet into the mines which have a total length of 600 miles, according to our guide. He said the park district hopes to be able to assure the safety of the mine so that the public tour can go from the Hazel Atlas Portal to the Greathouse Visitor Center.

The mines were stripped bare by vandals during the years they were unprotected, so everything you see inside the mines, including the rails, was restored by the park district.

My set of photos is here and these are a few samples:

Palmwood Fence Disappearing!

Yesterday as I drove on Indian through the area that would have been Palmwood, I was quite startled to see that about half of that ugly chain link fence has been taken away. I'm assuming this is in response to LAFCO's decision not to permit Desert Hot Springs to annex the area. Without the fence I'm reminded of how beautiful that area is. Probably worth a hike when the weather cools a bit.

¿No nos ven?

Photo by Raysitoxico® from another set of photos of "del Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos", and I still don't know what it's about.

UPDATE: An explanation of Los 400 Pueblos.

It Rained Somewhere

Last night there was a very nice lightning show over Joshua Tree...and I guessed it rained there too, as Dillon Road was flooded near Berdoo Canyon Road. That's drainage coming out of the park.

Mundane Life In Wartime

I happened to run across this 3-page letter written by my great uncle Sutt to his sister (my grandmother) while he was working in the Panama Canal Zone during World War II.

Direct links to a more readable size:

• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3

Recycled Water Screw Up

In Cary, North Carolina, they are way ahead of most other cities and have run recycled water lines in their residential areas, allowing homeowners to water their lawns with recycled water. And they do it the standard way: the recycled water is in a purple pipe. But at the Jain household some mysterious foul-up happened and the recycled water was connected to the house's plumbing, while fresh drinking water was going to the lawn sprinklers. The Jain family drank the recycled water for 5 months before the mistake was uncovered. Naturally, town officials are saying the risk to the family was very, very low. But I suppose we haven't heard the last of this.

Local Plants

Nuclear = Greenest

Jesse Ausubel "has analyzed the amount of energy that each so-called renewable source can produce in terms of Watts [sic] of power output per square meter of land disturbed." It is his conclusion that nuclear power is the greenest there is. He's got some good points...and some not-so-good. For example, a square kilometer of dammed land used for hydropower would generate enough electricity for only 12 Canadians. Should we assume Americans = Canadians in this matter, or does the average American consume more electricity than a Canadian? Biomass alone is terribly inefficient, but he doesn't address situations where you've already got a pile of biomass. For instance, you harvest a field of corn, leaving behind a huge stack of cornstalks. Would a power generator that burns those cornstalks be a net loss of energy?

As for wind power, he says an area the size of Texas would have to be covered with wind turbines and the wind would have to blow 24 hours a day at ideal speed in order to meet U.S. electric demands. Well, yes, we're all in favor of wiping out the entire state of Texas in order to build wind turbines, but nobody really expects them to provide 100% of the power supply. What about niche situations like Coachella Valley where we've got a bunch of BLM land right in the path of powerful winds where nobody wants to live anyway? Can wind turbines there produce profitable electricity? Solar power (meaning photovoltaic stuff, I think) is, of course, potentially destructive of large swaths of land. But solar cell technology is make great leaps in efficiency. If you put highly efficient solar cells on top of structures that have already destroyed the land, is that a net loss of energy? Can it make real economic sense?

Nuclear, as we all know, can produce a great amount of power in a relatively small space compared to some of the other technologies. Uranium mining destroys some land, but resource mining to support all the other technologies (iron, silicon, copper, etc.) also destroy land. The primary, reasonable objection to nuclear power is the difficulties in dealing with the spent fuel. Mr. Ausubel addresses that as well: "there are considerations of waste storage, safety and security." There are "considerations." Uh-huh.

Look at this over time. Say we build a big solar photovoltaic system in empty desert somewhere around the Salton Sea. It's ugly (to most eyes). It's got roads, all built with the support of petrochemicals. And how long is that solar array and its infrastructure there? A hundred years? Maybe with good maintenance, it won't completely disappear into the desert sands for three or four hundred years. And that nuclear fuel? How long before it innocently disappears into the desert sands? I'm pretty sure we're looking at time on the scale of tens of thousands of years, not mere hundreds. How much energy is expended over those millennia to assure the security of the nuclear waste?

Finally, Some Clarity

A good video that begins to explain why gay marriages threaten the "sanctity of marriage."

How To Use A Bidet

A helpful guide (sadly lacking video) for Americans traveling to clean-ass countries. It concludes with this advice: "Drinking from a bidet is not recommended. The stream can ricochet off a soiled area and become contaminated."

And do not miss this: How To Flush A British Toilet. You are not required to doff your hat or sing a patriotic tune to make it work.