Posted on 11/03/2019 7:02:15 AM PST by Trteamer
A little story of the Forest Service and an open mine shaft..
My wife and I ride ATV's up by Red Feather Lakes, CO. We were up the first week of August and stopped in to eat lunch by an old mine. We noticed that someone had taken a cutting torch and cut the big metal door off of the mine shaft, leaving it wide open for anyone to wander in. A ton of kids ride up there and it was very dangerous.
So I stop in the US Forest Service District Office in Fort Collins to report it.
The Forest Service has been that way for at least 50 years. Everything has to be specifically budgeted. Also, don’t dare to take matters into your own hands and do something to correct the situation.
Wonder how many manhours were spent in meetings to arrive at this outcome?
Vs.two guys tossing a portable welding outfit on an ATV and being done before lunch?
Forest Service is federal. I would never ask them to do diddly. But most western states have Divisions of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.
Much of what these state offices do is render mines safe. In AZ, for vertical shafts, they pour boulders and rubble down them.
And yes, abandoned mines are incredibly dangerous, as is the land around them. Even professional miners will only enter them very gingerly, while equipped with breathing equipment and safety gear. With friends outside if things go south.
Open mines all over the desert in AZ.
I bet if you’d mentioned the possibility of bats being harmed, they’d get someone up there ASAP to protect the bats
Burro-crazy burrocrats seem to find a way to make things happen to protect wildlife, but humans? Not so quickly
I am a caver as my handle suggests. I live in Indiana where we have hundreds of old mines on state and federal property. The mines are “gated” so as to allow bats entry and exit that might live there. I have personally worked on close to 25 gates to “close” old mines. The mines “might” be home to federally protected and rare bats. You can’t just go in and seal up a mine because some biologists might file suit against state, federal and private persons involved in gating the mines. As one poster stated, there has to be funds allocated to install a gate. We put the same gates on caves that allow bats entry/exit.
“I dunno. Maybe things would have gone better if she had included a one hundred dollar bill with each permit application.”
I’ve seen codes inspectors bribed with whiskey or smoked hams.
I say let people be stupid
The wilderness is full of cliffs. Holes. Snakes. Wild animals wild rivers
What are you going to do ? Ban them too?
ATV s are for wimps also. Get out there on your own two feet or wheels
You understand that this was government code for "Go F*** yourself, and don't bother me again"...
One could write a book on government ineptness. My favorite:
They bankrupted their own (confiscated) WHORE HOUSE in Nevada.......
LOL. WINNER!
[Half Moon Bay California] Tale of woe.
Something similar happened some years ago at Lake Elsinore, CA. Developers bought a large block of empty land, intending to build condos. They ran into financial problems and it took them a couple of years to round up the money. Then found out that they can’t build because they let the weeds grow and some endangered critter (I think a toad) made the area their homes.
Can sell the land, but must continue to pay taxes.
I believe it was in the LA Times, with a headline something like “Mow your land or lose it.”
“Can sell” = “Can’t sell”.
Remember what happened to poor Injun Joe in Tom Sawyer's story?
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