Collecting Arizona mining stock certificates

Stock certificates issued by mining companies during the 20th century have been increasing in value in recent years. Bloggingstocks.com offers a number of example certificates, including Phelps Dodge, Magma Copper Company, Arkansas and Arizona Copper Company, and United Western Minerals Company. Prices at the beginning of this decade were typically $4 or $5 each with some as high as $10, but are now running $40 - $60, resulting in investment returns (on the paper certificates, not the mines!) of 500% to 1100%.

[right, a certificate for 1000 shares of the Arkansas and Arizona Copper Company. Bloggingstocks.com says "the firm mined properties in the northernmost sector of the Verde Mining District of Yavapai County, Arizona. The certificate was issued in November of 1916 and indicates total authorized capital stock of $6.75 million. The piece was printed by the American Bank Note Company, a historically important engraver of currencies, postage stamps and stock/bond certificates. This specimen is up 500% ($10 to $60) in seven years."]

Asarco creditors reported split over competing bankruptcy plans

Asarco creditors are split between competing bankruptcy plans from Sterlite Industries and current owner, Grupo Mexico, according to a story on Bloomberg.com. They say that "Government agencies responsible for cleaning up Asarco’s pollution support the Sterlite sale, while people harmed by the asbestos products of an Asarco unit support the Grupo Mexico plan."

The creditors are reportedly able to vote on the two plans before the bankruptcy judge makes his final decision. [right, blasting at Asarco's Mission Mine. Credit, Asarco]

Water wars - threat or myth?

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict.”

But are wars over water an imminent threat or a media myth?

Seed magazine posted a debate today among 7 experts discussing historical and current events.

I was particularly intrigued by the argument that while many conflicts involve water, in most cases water is not the cause of war. [right, Lake Powell. Credit, National Park Service]

Moving of Moab uranium tailings from Colorado River is underway

The official ribbon cutting for the Moab tailings removal project was held on May 4, although trains began hauling the uranium waste from the Colorado River floodplain a week earlier. The 16 million tons of tailings are being hauled 30 miles away to be buried in a permanent home.

The tailings are remains from the Atlas mill that processed uranium during the Cold War of the 1950-60s. But sitting on the banks of the Colorado River raised concerns about contamination and erosion or even collapse of the pile during flooding.

[top right, view of tailings pile, looking south over the Colorado River and the Moab Valley. Credit, DOE; lower left, excavating tailings to load onto train cars. Credit Energy Solutions]

Phoenix without the people

If the inhabitants of Phoenix were gone, how long would it take for groundwater levels and desert rivers to recover?

Kristine Uhlman [right] of the UA Water Resources Research Center will appear on an upcoming "Life After People" episode on The History Channel (May 19, 7 pm locally) to answer that question with computer simulations.

"The ten-episode series postulates that humans won't be around forever. The fate of a particular environment, city or theme is examined in each of the various episodes."


[taken in part from the UA news release]

Geology prominent among Arizona book awards

Kartchner Caverns by Neil Miller was named 'Best Book' from the Arizona Book Publishers Association at their annual awards dinner the other night.

It was one of three geology-themed books to get awards. In addition, the Grand Canyon Association was singled out for a special award for Excellence in Publishing. [right, Wayne Ranney, whose books received three awards, and Helen Thompson from GCA. Photo from Wayne's blog site, Earthly Musings. Wayne claims that he really did wear the tux - it's not photoshopped in]

The full list of awards is at the ABA site, but the geology-related winners are below:

Best Book
Kartchner Caverns
Neil Miller
The University of Arizona Press

Coffee Table, Large Format & Nature/Environment
Images: Jack Dykinga’s Grand Canyon
Jack Dykinga/Charles Bowden/Wayne Ranney
Arizona Highways

Science/Environment
Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau
Ron Blakey/Wayne Ranney
Grand Canyon Association

Special Awards:
Excellence in Publishing
Grand Canyon Association

Giant solar energy plant planned northwest of Kingman

The Kingman Miner newspaper reports that a 340-megawatt solar power electricity plant is planned 27 miles northwest of Kingman. Mohave Sun Power will use parabolic trough technology to heat oil in tubes to generate steam to make electricity. Excess heat will be stored in molten salt for use at peak demand times.

This is the same technology proposed by Albiasa Solar for its 200-megawatt plant in the region [right, credit Albiasa Corp].

The Mohave plant is expected to use 1,500 to 2,000 acre-feet of water per year to wash the collectors and generate steam, which is raising some concerns locally. The $2.1 billion solar project will be one of the largest in the world. Electricity will be sold to the highest bidder. Construction would start in late 2010 and be complete in late 2013

Jon Kyl reported holding up nominations to get action on Resolution Copper land swap

The Phoenix Business Journal is repeating a story that U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl is blocking four presidential nominees to U.S. Energy Department posts to force the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to act on a land swap bill needed for the Resolution Copper mine near Superior to move forward. [right, Apache Leap is one of the areas involved in the land exchange. Credit, Resolution Copper]

ADOT removes detour from 2008 landslide on SR87

The Arizona Department of Transportation closed the southbound lanes of State Route 87 at the junction of SR 188 from last night until this morning to remove the crossover detour that has been in place since the March 21, 2008 landslide that closed the road for 6 days.

The highway should now be restored to two northbound and two southbound lanes. [right, ADOT slope stabilization work, May 16, 2008. My photo]

Deal for El Paso's natural gas storage assets in Picacho basin

NGS Energy announced today that they El Paso Corporation "have signed a Memorandum of Acquisition and Understanding with regard to El Paso's Pinal County, Arizona natural gas storage asset. Under the agreement, NGS Energy has an exclusive due diligence period and right to purchase all acreage, wells, geological and technical data and rights currently held by El Paso. The storage project is in the Picacho Basin and would include a 9 mile header system that could connect to Transwestern Pipeline, El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline, as well as numerous new and proposed gas fired plants."

The company estimates the current acreage position could result in a 20 Bcf (billion cubic feet) storage facility and will utilize above ground evaporation ponds. They state that FERC filings will occur this summer with operations slated for Summer 2012. El Paso has been exploring the potential to dissolve chambers in the thick salt beds in the Picacho basin and pump in natural gas under pressure until it was needed [right, salt cavern storage model. Credit, US DOE]

Legislation is under consideration in the Arizona Legislature (HB2352/SB1236) that would exempt natural gas storage operations from state rules that preclude the underground disposal of brines dissolved in the formation of salt caverns. However, if NGS uses surface evaporation ponds, there will be no need for underground brine disposal.

Charting the USGS budget

The President's budget request of $1.1 billion for the USGS is a stark change from the slow erosion of the agency's budget over the past decade.

[right, USGS budgets 1996-2009 fiscal years; EI is Enterprise Information, GC is Global Change; credit USGS Coalition]

Thanks to Science Insider for the link to the chart.

1.7 terabytes of HiRISE Mars images released

The HiRISE camera folks at UA have stepped up the release of imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

More than 64,000 images, totaling 1.7 terabytes are now publicly available and more will be coming monthly.

This is as much fun as 40 years ago when the first Landsat and other satellites were streaming back photos that allowed us to see the Earth in a way never imagined.

[right, credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona]

Did secret space telescope mirrors end up in Arizona observatory?

With the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission underway, there's an interesting story at the Space Review about the first planned space telescope. Mirrors from that 1960s venture may have ended up in the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona.

In the days of the space race, when the US Air Force was working on its own manned space program in parallel with NASA's, the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory was going to carry a large multi-mirrored telescope into orbit.

For two decades after the program was cancelled, the UA's Multiple Mirror Telescope combined six smaller mirrors into one larger telescope. Did those mirrors come from the Air Force’s MOL program? The program was classified but the Space Review article makes a good case for this. [right, the MMTO]

Yucca Mountain 'stalemate'

When the President's budget request zeroed out funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository [right, artist's concept with geologic cutaway. Credit, DOE], the initial conventional wisdom was that the project was dead.

But there's growing debate that "Yucca isn't dead yet. It has formidable backing in the House and from probably a majority of members of the Senate. Legally, it remains the nation's only approved long-term nuclear waste storage site," according to an extensive analysis in the New York Times.

An editorial on the Chicago Tribune's Web site today entitled, "Keep Yucca Mountain project alive," said killing the Yucca Mountain's repository "would leave Illinois with the shaft" of storing nearly 7,000 tons of nuclear waste.

Similar arguments are coming forward from other areas where spent nuclear fuel is temporarily stored while waiting a permanent home.

State Land Commissioner Mark Winkelman resigns

Mark Winkelman, State Land Commissioner for Arizona, announced his resignation yesterday, effective May 22. [right, Mark Winkleman, Arizona State Land Commissioner, and Scott Cooke, Safford Field Manager, BLM, sign documents approving the Dry Lake wind farm for construction on public lands, last year. Credit, SRP]

In a letter to department staff, Mark noted the record accomplishments the department has made in recent years in raising revenues for the trust beneficiaries.

It's my sense there is little understanding of the role and duties of state trust land departments in Western states.

When the territories became states, some amounts of federal lands were set aside in trust for different groups of beneficiaries, with school children being the largest. The trust lands were to be used solely for the financial well-being of the beneficiaries. This was codified in the federal enabling legislation creating the state and typically in the new state's constitution.

Any deviation from maximizing the beneficiaries revenues is a violation of the trustee's fiduciary responsibilities and the courts have upheld that consistently and repeatedly across the public lands states of the country.

That put state land departments in a quandry because of competing demands for management of those extensive trust lands for purposes other than simply making the most money from them.

Mark worked really hard to balance the departments legal obligations with environmental and public concerns about development of trust lands.

Four Corners caves host new species

A newly-published fact sheet from the USGS reports that "Caves in northern Arizona and western New Mexico are being researched and inventoried by scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and cooperating agencies. Southwestern caves have been little studied, and scientists are now finding that these lightless and nutrient-poor natural systems are home to life forms found nowhere else on Earth. This research has identified unique communities of arthropods (insects, arachnids, and crustaceans) that include 3 new genera, or groups of species, and at least 15 new species—some only known to exist in a single cave."

[right, exploration of a recently discovered cave in Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Arizona. This desert cave is unusual because it has numerous standing pools of water. Photograph courtesy of Jon Jasper, Bureau of Land Management, and Kyle Voyles, National Park Service.]

Thanks to Hobart at geology.com for spotting this.

First report on Colorado Plateau Coring Project workshop

Bill Parker ('Chinleana' blog) is just back from the Colorado Plateau Coring Project Workshop in Albuquerque with a short post and good links.

The project proposes to "core Triassic and Jurassic rocks of the Colorado Plateau [right, credit CPCP] to obtain detailed stratigraphic data including paleomagnetism, palynology, isotopic dates, etc..."

I hope we'll hear more about the results and plans for the project soon.

Meteor Crater photo is otherworldly

A dazzling photo of Meteor Crater, Arizona titled Origin 5 (Meteor Crater), 2006 (or 2007?), photographed by Stan Gaz, from his Impact Series. Prints are available for sale from ClampArt. When I first saw this, it was so familiar, yet so alien.

© Stan Gaz/Credit ClampArt, New York City

Big budget increases for USGS Geography, Global Change

AGU is circulating more details on the Administration's fiscal 2010 budget for the USGS which includes an overall $54 million increase (5.2%) to $1.1 billion. That alone is significant. Too often in recent years, the USGS is struggling just to hold on to existing programs and budgets.

Two items are especially noteworthy:

The proposed budget for Geography is nearly doubled - Geographic Research, Investigations, and Remote Sensing: $143.9M or 99% increase.

Global Change would get $58.18M, a 43.5% increase. A "national assessment of the geological storage capacity for carbon sequestration" will be launched.

A few other increases:

• $649M in R&D spending, 6.2% increase
• Geologic Hazards, Resource, and Processes: $247M, 2% increase
• Water Resources Investigations: $227.9M, 2.9% increase

Click here for more details

Running out of plutonium to power U.S. spacecraft

The U.S. is running out of plutonium 238 (238Pu) which is the only practical isotope for fueling the power systems of NASA planetary missions. As a result, "NASA is already making mission-limiting decisions based on the short supply of 238Pu," as revealed in a prepublication version of a report by the Space Sciences Board of the National Research Council. UA geosciences professor Spencer Titley is one of the co-authors of the study.

Plutonium-238 [right, 238Pu pellet glowing from its own heat. Credit, US Dept. of Energy] has been produced in quantity only for the purpose of fueling Radioisotope Power Systems for spacecraft (RPSs). "In the past, the United States had an adequate supply of 238Pu, which was produced in facilities that existed to support the U.S.nuclear weapons program. The problem is that no 238Pu has been produced in the United States since the Department of Energy (DOE) shut down those facilities in the late 1980s. Since then, the U.S. space program has had to rely on the inventory of 238Pu that existed at that time, supplemented by the purchase of 238Pu from Russia. However, Russian facilities to produce 238Pu were also shut down many years ago, and the DOE will soon take delivery of its last shipment of 238Pu from Russia."

The NRC committee "does not believe that there is any additional 238Pu (or any operational 238Pu production facilities) available anywhere in the world."

"If the status quo persists, the United States will not be able to provide RPSs for any subsequent missions." The report concludes that the cost of reestablishing domestic production of 238Pu will likely exceed $150 million.

Radioisotope Power Systems: An Imperative for Maintaining U.S. Leadership in Space Exploration; National Research Council, Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), Space Studies Board (SSB)