Show HN: Mines.fyi – all the mines in the US in a leaflet visualization
53 points
5 hours ago
| 15 comments
| mines.fyi
| HN
I downloaded the MSHA's (Mine Safety and Health Administration) public datasets and create a visualization of all the mines in the US complete with the operators and details on each site.
pimlottc
1 hour ago
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Please reduce the aggregation of map markers. It's not helpful to group every mine in southwest US in a single point in California that makes it look like they are none in any other state. I see this all the time on maps and it's really frustrating. Aggregate markers are helpful when the individual points are actually overlapping on the map, otherwise they obscure location data.
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phillipseamore
1 hour ago
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True. Clustering on a map is usually a sign that a map was setup by someone that doesn't use it or has no interest in the data.
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koshergweilo
2 hours ago
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I don't know why, but when I read the title I assumed the map was about landmines.

No, these are the cool ones that take stuff out of the ground, not the ones that destroy everything above them

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jedberg
2 hours ago
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Same! And then I saw three near my house and thought "if they know where they are, why haven't they been removed???"

Then I clicked on one and saw it was the name of our local rock quarry. :)

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guessmyname
2 hours ago
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Oh! I thought it was landmines too and was very confused + concerned when I saw dots near where I live.
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buildbot
2 hours ago
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I had exactly the same thought, and was quite intrigued. Very disappointed actually, it would be cool if there was open data about land mines.
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AlotOfReading
1 hour ago
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The US government has been pretty good about cleaning up the UXO it knows about, which means what's left is the UXO it doesn't know about. You'll find it near most of the current and former testing ranges, particularly Yuma Proving Ground where there's trails leading right from the adjacent BLM land into areas with potential UXO. The only real barriers are a few signs and the law.
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jeffbee
1 minute ago
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I looked for all my local mines and none of them are on here.
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tastyfreeze
2 hours ago
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USGS MRDATA has a lot more mines. Their data is also freely available for download. I use their datasets and base maps for my personal GIS projects.

https://mrdata.usgs.gov/

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bombcar
1 hour ago
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It includes what most would call quarries and it doesn't include anywhere near all of them (there are basically infinite invisible quarries everywhere to make concrete because it doesn't transport well).
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alan_sass
47 minutes ago
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Just a heads-up that this is nowhere near "all the mines" in Nevada. I've explored quite a few personally, live by some, and that entire list of my memories is missing. NV is also not included in the list of top 10 states which is a clear indicator of missing data fwiw.
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HardwareLust
3 hours ago
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I saw your title and my first thought was "Why are there landmines in the US?" lol.
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buildbot
2 hours ago
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Apparently there are in fact, 0. Publicly, at least.
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SaberTail
4 hours ago
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This doesn't seem to be complete. It's missing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, for example, which should be southeast of Carlsbad, NM. It's a underground salt (metal/non-metal) mine, and MSHA definitely regulates it
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snypher
1 hour ago
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WIPP isn't really a mine, right? More like an Amazon warehouse.
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greggsy
2 hours ago
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The state numbers don’t seem to marry up, unless they’re indicative of something else?
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kenforthewin
4 hours ago
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I'm glad it's those kinds of mines rather than the ones I first thought of.
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simonw
3 hours ago
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TIL there's a mine within San Francisco city limits! https://mines.fyi/mine/0405261

(I guess technically a "surface mine" for "Construction Sand and Gravel".)

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maxbond
3 hours ago
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Once you learn how to spot these you'll see them everywhere on road trips and such.
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greggsy
2 hours ago
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I see quarries everywhere, and they’re kind of required near any city or road project around Australia. Never considered them as a mine though… more like a ‘general resource site’?
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dboreham
1 hour ago
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The data set includes gravel pits. You can filter them out by selecting "Underground" for "Type".
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defrost
1 hour ago
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Wouldn't that also filter out every open cut surface mine that strips overburden and directly extracts near surface coal, copper deposits, iron ore, etc.

Not every mine is a "classic" underground mine with tunnels, etc.

See (for example) the W.Australian SuperPit gold mine which consolidated every shaft mine in a particular region into a single open pit that goes deeper than any pre existing underground mine in that area.

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nektro
3 hours ago
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I love the idea of a site like this existing but the expanding dots is a really bad way to visualize this.
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advisedwang
3 hours ago
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This seems to include cement works and other processing plants that have somewhat mine-like output but aren't actually extracting anything from the ground at that site.
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bombcar
1 hour ago
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And it doesn't include all of those.
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irasigman
5 hours ago
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Downloaded from https://www.msha.gov/data-and-reports/mine-data-retrieval-sy.... Pipe-delimited, updated weekly by MSHA.
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alexchamberlain
4 hours ago
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There are 3 mines on Manhattan; is that correct?
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leeter
4 hours ago
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Based on the info if you click into them, likely no. I would have expected them to be incidental materials from tunneling, but reading the description that's not the case.
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greggsy
2 hours ago
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Quarries?
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greggsy
2 hours ago
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Is oil considered a mined mineral, or just shale oil?
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w10-1
2 hours ago
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Can't see a thing. Dark on dark in Safari 26.3.
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Exuma
4 hours ago
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How many of these pose asbestos hazards like the Libby mine?
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dboreham
51 minutes ago
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The Libby mine isn't in the data set because it's no longer operational.
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jeffbee
32 seconds ago
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The map has a "Status" predicate.
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defrost
36 minutes ago
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The US, like many countries and regions, has poor coverage of abandoned, closed, and shuttered mine sites despite such sites still posing an ongoing danger in terms of imminent physical danger (collapse, decay, etc) and untreated waste piles and ponds leaching toxins into ground waters, etc.

To answer the question posed, "how many (US?) mine sites pose a danger of type {X}" requires crawling the US BLM datasets, the OSHA datasets, the archived (from when active) MSHA datasets, and having a some luck onside for various specific sites due to large gaps and periods of not caring at all.

See:

* https://www.epa.gov/epcra/does-msha-have-jurisdiction-over-i...

* https://www.blm.gov/programs/aml-environmental-cleanup/aml

Various transnational global mining companies (Rio Tinto, et al) have extensive datasets on global resources and minesites, both operational, and past and potential future sites.

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