Synopses & Reviews
The Mine is a knife-edged thriller that captures the battle between a young, hard-charging biologist intent on closing an illegal cyanide-leach gold mine, and a corrupt mining company that will stop at nothing to defeat him. A newlywed devoted to his wife and his first professional job at Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, biologist Ryan Evans is shocked when DEQ approves permits to expand a massive cyanide leach gold mine by four-fold, nearly ten square miles. His obsessive investigation uncovers deep corruption, fraud, and the likely murder of a DEQ investigator. And this knowledge may destroy all that he has ever cherished.
In 1990, the Summitville Gold Mine in Colorado released a flood of cyanide, heavy metals, arsenic, and sulfuric acid into the Alamosa River, killing all aquatic life in over 17 miles of the river and contaminating downstream farmland. The Canadian company, Galactic Resources, soon filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the site. This environmental disaster is now an EPA Superfund site and to date, the EPA has spent over 200 million dollars for ongoing clean-up. This is the most expensive EPA cleanup on record and it will continue into perpetuity.
In 1990 the Brewer Gold Mine in Jefferson, South Carolina failed, flooding the Lynches River with over ten million gallons of solution containing cyanide and a long list of toxic heavy metals. The spill killed at least 11,000 fish and decimated 50 miles of the Lynches River. The Brewer Company later abandoned the site, and the leach mine is now a Federal Superfund Site. Taxpayers will be paying many millions of dollars for cleanup for decades.
These are just two examples of how gold is mined today. While fiction, The Mine is based on Colorado's $200,000,000 Summitville Mine disaster, Europe's Aurul Mine catastrophe which decimated over 150 miles of the Danube River, and the coming environmental debacle to top them all: Alaska's 20-square mile Pebble Mine.
Review
"The Mine is a riveting thriller that is sure to entertain and please." Midwest Book Review
Review
"This fast-paced, fact-based, Grisham-esque thriller enthralled me. It cost me sleep and ultimately made me want to write to my Congressperson....[The Mine is] really well written and researched, everyone should read [it]!" Annie Bloom's Books, Portland, Oregon
About the Author
Daniel Cobb was born in the Pacific Northwest and spent his early youth on a farm on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. He is a husband, a father of three grown sons, and a career writer for the science and technology industries. With real work consuming the full week-plus, he started serious work on this thriller, The Mine, in 2003 and completed it in the fall of 2009. Countless early mornings and cups of black coffee were surrendered to writing this novel and he enjoyed almost every minute of it.