Living Next To An Open Cast Gold Mine - Waihi Central School

I have been reading Digging for Gold this week by Jan Maguiness. The story is about an open cast mine called the Martha mine. They started mining there in 1878. It is 250metres deep, which is the size of 10 swimming pools. It is 860metres long which is 34 swimming pools and 600metres wide which is 24 swimming pools. In the future when they have finished mining they plan to turn it into a lake. A car is the size of half of one of the wheels on the dump truck. Every week about 1 million dollars worth of gold and silver is taken out of the rock. There were 175 kilometres of tunnels.
After I had finished reading we went and had a look at the Martha Mine website.  We seen pictures of the open cast mine and pictures of what they thought the mine would look like when they had finished mining. We also seen a video that some kids had made that lived in Waihi where the mine is. The video was about the mine, they  asked questions and shared thier information about the water treatment, about what they did with the waste rock and tailings and what the plans where fore the future of the mine. Martha mine has spent 11 million dollars on the water treatment setup. The waste rock and tailings are made back into new pasture. The plan to make the mine into a lake and park when they are finished mining. The gold and silver gets melted down into nuggets and bars to be sold.

By ALAN