On the basis that it is easy to blame the mine and difficult to prove they are innocent, I post this from this link:
A jury says the Atlantic Richfield Co. isn’t responsible for damages to a historic Butte apartment building that the owner said were caused by mining done a half-century ago.
The Montana Standard (http://bit.ly/RhI1UQ) reports the jury deliberated about two hours before handing down the verdict Friday evening. The decision means ARCO won’t have to pay monetary damages to Jody Barile, the owner of the 36-unit building.
Barile, who bought the building in 1997, began noticing cracks in the facade around 2001. She sued ARCO, contending the damage was because of subsidence, caused by underground mining at the site done by the Anaconda Co. in the 1940s and 1950s. ARCO purchased the Anaconda Co. in 1977.
ARCO’s attorney Robert Cameron told the jury during closing arguments that afternoon that subsidence — while it did occur — wasn’t responsible for the damage to the building. He noted that surface subsidence happened 40 years ago and only caused the building to shift about 2 feet.
“The amount of tilt is not even visible to the naked eye,” he said.
Cameron also brought in experts that testified the damage may have been caused by leaks in Butte’s water system, and the attorney suggested the cracks may have been caused by construction of the neighboring Butte High School parking lot.
“Common sense tells us the subsidence didn’t cause damage to the building,” Cameron told the jury.
But Barile’s attorney Wade Dahood contended that subsidence was the sole cause of the damage and that engineers described the building as a “dead building walking” that would eventually be damaged beyond repair. He described ARCO to the jury as a large corporation that wasn’t willing to take responsibility or negotiate with Barile.
“If they’re not going to be fair with Jody . they’re not going to be fair to anybody,” Dahood said.
Dahood said Barile had hoped to be awarded enough money in the lawsuit to allow her to build or refurbish a building elsewhere in Butte and have her tenants relocate there.
Subsidence can occur long after a mine is closed. The Hollinger Mine, in Schumacher (Timmins) is a good example. Mining ceased in 1966, but cave-ins occurred periodically until as recently as 2004. In one famous case a fleet of school buses fell into a hole over a weekend and were forever lost. The Hollinger golf course was originally a 9 hole course, but became a 7 hole course due to sink holes. The cause? Sand was used as backfill, and as water rose slowly over the years the sand shifted, causing movement all the way to surface. Kinross spent several millions digging out old stopes and sealing them with concrete. Hopefully that stops the problem for a few hundred years.
Also in Timmins, back in 1998 a 60 million tonne chunk of rock began moving inside the old Kidd Mine pit. It destroyed all infrastructure down to the 2,000 ft level. The cause? Mining of salvage ore in previously mined stopes. This eventually led to highwall instability.
Subsidence has been noted in Saskatchewan, over top of potash mines. Once the flat lying seams are mined the rock overhead slowly converges, causing surface terrain to re-form. Believe it or not, the floor of drifts defies gravity and actually rise to meet the roof on its way down.
Looking at the picture, it appears the near side floor of the building has dropped substantially, but the roof appears to have remained in its original position. If the mining lawyer is correct about 2 ft of subsidence I question how the building remains standing.
Now hardrockminer I am disappointed! You better follow Jack’s link to the newspaper story and see the real photo of the Barile building.
Sounds like a clear cut case of damage caused prior to the person purchasing the building. Once a building is damaged by subsidence, the distressed foundation will continue to allow increased damage to develop in the building due to normal soil movements, even after the subsidence event is over and the strata has restabilized. I often see buildings that have been damaged by mine subsidence and they are not properly repaired. Cosmetic repairs are made but the foundation is not repaired. The house or building is sold and after some time the new owner experiences new damage and thinks there is an active mine subsidence causing it. But alas, the new damage is caused by the normal soil movements acting on a distressed foundation. Thefoundation is not performing as a new or properly repaired foundation should.
Jack does post pretty pictures in his blogs!
I examined some of the historic maps of the stopes under this building in 2008, taking into account the story of the next-door parking construction. Without any rigorous geotechnical evaluation, it seemed much more likely that the subsidence was caused by the recent construction rather than the historic mining. Granted, there was a chance that a more in-depth study would have shown that the subsidence could have propagated up from the shallowest stopes, but just looking at the section maps made me think the mechanics just didn’t work out.
I’m glad it turned out positively for ARCO. There are already “subsidence easements” over much of the Butte properties, for obvious reasons. If you buy in Butte, you better know what you’re in for.
Here are some of the effects of mining induced sinkholes in Timmins.
http://www.northernontariodiscussionboard.com/index.cgi?board=talk&action=print&thread=431