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Russian City Ever Watchful Against Being Sucked Into Earth
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the most expensive apartment ever sold in New York City — the $88 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West — and did much for local real estate values. But in Berezniki, the mining city where he made his fortune, properties have literally been plunging. 'Imagine putting a sugar cube in a cup of tea,' Mikhail A. Permyakov, the chief land surveyor for Uralkali, the company that owns the mine. 'That is what happened under Berezniki.' Berezniki is afflicted by sinkholes, hundreds of feet deep, that can open at a moment's notice. So grave is the danger that the entire city is under 24-hour video surveillance. In 2008 a government commission cleared Mr. Rybolovlev of wrongdoing, blaming past unsafe practices for the sinkholes. A senior official close to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin says that Mr. Rybolovlev bears some responsibility, even though he sold the mine after the occurrence of the first great openings."
if one thinks the US has problems with wealthy, influential people, just look to Russia to see how bad it can get.
Everything but the kitchen sinking!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Hole in one, guaranteed!
Please replace sinkho^H^H^H^H^H divots
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Sink holes are quite common in many places around the world. There are no mines under Centurion, yet a sink hole occurs multiple times per year in the dolomite areas.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Don't quit your day job
If you have one
“We will fight the holes with science,” the mayor, Sergei P. Dyakov, said in an interview.
Meanwhile in America, we hold prayer vigils for rain.
The year where an apartment in manhattan is sold for an amount that can feed a small country for a month.
Didn't anyone inform them that things tend to disappear in Russia? In this case, the entire city.
In the west you sink money into mining investments, in russia money in mining investments sink YOU!
So grave is the danger
I see what you did there.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Corporate profits always come first. Coal fires are a problem in some areas and at least one town had to be abandoned since the fires can last for decades and possibly centuries. Many towns had to be abandoned over industrial pollution and yet I constantly hear it's government regulations that cause the problems. How much of the planet do we sacrifice to greed? I'm not talking about halting progress this is about people cutting corners to make higher profits. Coal companies were supposed to have phased in safe guards to limit mercury and other heavy metals from being released but they ignored the regulations and now want them thrown out. A lot of cheap power depends on ignoring the problems it causes. In coal country areas near power plants have cancer rates through the roof. There's a price of pain and suffering. Often in the end the government ends up picking up the bill for health care and clean up. So long as corporations are protected and the people that run them are safe from being held accountable this will continue to happen. Change the rules and bankrupt the owners and corporate heads of the companies and see how fast it all changes.
"So grave is the danger that the entire city is under 24-hour video surveillance."
I guess London must be on its way down as well.
In Soviet Russia, hole buries you!
Hate to break environmental wackos ideas ,but; some truth, sinkholes are common in nature without coal fires or mines. Florida, has more than most people can count and more every year, other States also. Underground rivers dissolve limestone, then collapse. Here is a link to wise up them that need to be learned.
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/geologictopics/sinkhole/florida_sinkhole_poster.pdf
Also, old lava tubes/tunnels can collapse causing sinkholes.
Russian baby dies in sewer after pavement collapse
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
what's not to like?
holes sink you.
Sound likes Centralia, PA-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
Except without all the hellfire. And in Centralia they did do it to themselves by setting their own mine on fire. I didn't get enough info from TFA to have an opinion if the mines were done badly enough to reach criminal levels, especially since it's being caused by a natural process and they did try to stop it. If they do hold Rybo responsible, would it even be enough to help the town out?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_of_Kiruna
We sink you!
I love ambiguous story summaries. Anybody else think that the quote, "Imagine putting a sugar cube in a cup of tea," was referring to the buildings, not to, "the walls and pillars of salt that miners had left to support the ceilings of huge underground caverns began to dissolve?"
...is the best/worst example of a city that's sinking. Too many people, too much water being pumped out from under it. And the Aztec Gods are still mad about what happened to their people.
Let's disregard the smaller stuff. Can't really comb the nonsense above sentence by sentence. Nor would we want to right?
I mean, when one touts "free market" claiming that people get things cheaply from corporations motivated only by profit, blindly disregarding the "what market can bear" principle of pricing... what can you do to such a person?
They are either lying their ass off to promote their own agenda, or they have a few of the wires in their noggin crossed.
And since I'm of firm belief that people ARE essentially good-natured and not evil pricks - I'm going with mental problems here.
government that allows the corporations to mine on land that is held public.
OK. Governments, which are the extension of the public (i.e. Of the people, by the people...) lease out land. Under very specific conditions.
This IS a government created problem, because government holds this land and allows companies to come and to mine on it without actually participating in a market of any kind. The gov't sells licenses to their preferred companies and takes away liability and responsibility.
See kids? This is the case of a mind not working properly.
Russian problem in TFA (I suppose we are still talking about that, but there MIGHT be a possibility that the poster above is having some other argument in his mind with that "This IS" of his.) arose from two things.
1 - improperly sealed chambers in the mine.
2 - freshwater flooding in.
Now, for number 2 you can only blame god. Fuck you god! There.
Number 1 on the other hand was responsibility of the corporation/company running the mine.
See kids, government does not "take away liability and responsibility" when leasing something. They TRANSFER IT.
As for government not "actually participating in a market of any kind" - that is called "irrelevant argument".
Government does not need to "participate in the market" to protect the rights and well being of its citizens. You know - doing its job.
It's the government. They make laws and regulations for that.
Whatever land that gov't holds in 'public' possession where somebody wants to mine or do any business, this land has to be auctioned off.
What do you think would happen then?
Before we answer that, let's just point out that the poster is suggesting that the government (Of the people, by the people...) should take the land belonging to all citizens of the country and sell it to the highest bidder. Literally.
Which would, again literally, mean that the government should STEAL the public property in order to acquire profit.
You know... instead of doing their job, working for the greater good of all, they would act like a corporation - motivated only by profit.
Now... What would happen then?
Well... "because nobody could afford to buy it outright" it would be bought by international corporations and funds. Also, foreign governments.
So, add treason to stealing - country would not even have to be conquered to foreign inva.. buyers.
You know. Like what USA did to Russia with Alaska. Only now we would be talking ANY land ANY where.
And the rest of the post above is just "Oogily-boogily" crazy talk.
Governments not knowing "real" values cause they can't compete with private owners - as apparently that is a prerequisite to understanding math, economics, statistics and basically being able to add 2 and 2.
Governments getting more money which is good, but which is bad.
And lets not forget the solution for the gov-good-bad problem - investing ALL THE MONEY FROM THE SALE of the land INTO CLEANUP of the effects from mining.
Yup. That's the idea.
1. Sell public land to foreign investors stripping people of the country of any and all value that land may EVER have to them.
2. Let foreign investors mine the land and keep all the profit AND the land.
3
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That was the point?
So, you get rid of the wealthy then everyone will be rich and there will be no crime?
Do I get a pony too?
No brain, no pain.
It happens.
http://amandabauer.blogspot.com/2010/06/guatemala-sinkhole.html
In democratic Europe the miners move the town (Kiruna).
Firstly, the siting of the camp for the prisoners that originally worked the mine was a political decision, not a reasoned, geologically-informed decision.
Secondly, it seems (TFA isn't terribly detailed) that there wasn't a problem until about 2000, when they encountered a fresh water flow which they couldn't control adequately, and which started to corrode the "pillars" which had been left in place to support the roof. Only once they'd dissolved did the sink holes start to develop. So, the sequence is (1) site camp ; (2) camp develops into (a fairly small) city ; (3) problem underground ; (4) sink holes work their way from underground to surface in the middle of the city.
The sink holes didn't exist (or didn't have any surface expression) before the camp (city) was positioned.
As a caver and a geologist, I spend some of my leisure time searching for sink holes in sink-prone areas. Since the ground is largely covered by glacial debris, spotting a sink hole which isn't actively in use by a stream can be really difficult.
There's a team at the University of Zaragosa who are trying to develop ground-penetrating radar techniques for (1) detecting pre-existing sink holes in the ground ; and (2) monitoring for changes before the problems reach the surface. But even they don't find it easy. Certainly the GPR work that I was involved in wasn't terribly successful at finding known sink holes.
Did you want a simple answer? There isn't one.
View Larger Map Will a Google map link work?
Or this link?
So ... the city in question is on the margins of the Urals (hence likely to have glacial outwash debris blanketing the landscape) ; it's sited on the banks of a river (so, one would expect that 750 to 1000m below the ground, the rock is likely to be saturated with water). So mine flooding is likely to be a difficult issue (if they were on the top of a hill, drainage can be much easier - dig an adit drain).
It looks to me as if the simplest solution would be to move the city. But that largely depends on if it's a company town or if property has been sold to people.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"