Groom Lake and the National Test Site (where the US set off literally hundreds of nuclear bombs) is roughly the same distance from Las Vegas, just in a slightly different direction. [https://maps.app.goo.gl/oKc83mrnptUSPVJ2A?g_st=ic]
That area is about as remote and in hospitable to human life as anyone can find in the lower 48 once you get off the highway. The only way it would get more remote is if someone kept driving and took a turn somewhere along there. I’ve spent plenty of time out in those deserts.
Exactly this. 45 minutes at 65mph is plenty far away for just about everything mining related with the sole exception of considering watersheds.
Watershed impacts are actually what killed gold mining in the California foothills - there's still plenty of gold there, we just can't get it with current technologies.
Mixing drinking water, mines and mineral resources doesn't end well for anyone.
Most of those areas have pocket reservoirs/don’t share groundwater meaningfully. Lots of isolated areas due to the geology.
Same reason that the nuclear test site hazard is mostly blown dust, not water contamination despite literally hundreds and hundreds of nuclear detonations. They have their own isolated watershed and water table, like most of those valleys.
Dude, there's a golf course just up the road. This is exurban Vegas in 2023. It was "remote and inhospitable" in WW2, before anyone bothered to put a city there. That's an extremely high traffic interstate highway a mile south.
The LA/Vegas corridor may look pristine and empty (owing in no small part to significant regulation that keeps it that way!), but it's not remotely a "low density" population area.
By just up the road you mean 20 miles? Of open desert?
I-15 is high traffic, but once you get off it, you’re in the middle of nowhere for most of its length. Like ‘if you get out of your car and stop walking, no one will find your body for decades’ kind of middle of nowhere. Have you driven I15?
That it is regulated to prevent building definitely helps preserve that - but doesn’t change that nature?
Not that anyone would likely be building in those alkali lake beds anyway.
> The LA/Vegas corridor may look pristine and empty (owing in no small part to significant regulation that keeps it that way!), but it's not remotely a "low density" population area.
So, you are saying that there is a dense urban strip city hidden under the regulated, pristine desert?
Anything on the California side has to deal with extensive environmental impact regulation, and deserts are fragile. That mine is in California.
If you go exploring in Balarat or around Death Valley, it’s easy to find intact mines that are 70+ years old with everything nearly intact (except for the rat nests anyway).
As to if that regulation is appropriate given its remote location, etc. that’s up to the California state legislature.
Notably, mining is a much larger part of the state economy in Nevada, on the other side of the border.
Groom Lake and the National Test Site (where the US set off literally hundreds of nuclear bombs) is roughly the same distance from Las Vegas, just in a slightly different direction. [https://maps.app.goo.gl/oKc83mrnptUSPVJ2A?g_st=ic]
That area is about as remote and in hospitable to human life as anyone can find in the lower 48 once you get off the highway. The only way it would get more remote is if someone kept driving and took a turn somewhere along there. I’ve spent plenty of time out in those deserts.
It’s very easy to not show up on someone’s radar ever again [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Germans].