Show HN: Mines.fyi – all the mines in the US in a leaflet visualization

[OP] irasigman | a day ago

Downloaded from https://www.msha.gov/data-and-reports/mine-data-retrieval-sy.... Pipe-delimited, updated weekly by MSHA.

alexchamberlain | a day ago

There are 3 mines on Manhattan; is that correct?

leeter | a day ago

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.

greggsy | 22 hours ago

Quarries?

kenforthewin | a day ago

I'm glad it's those kinds of mines rather than the ones I first thought of.

Exuma | a day ago

How many of these pose asbestos hazards like the Libby mine?

dboreham | 21 hours ago

The Libby mine isn't in the data set because it's no longer operational.

defrost | 20 hours ago

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.

jeffbee | 20 hours ago

The map has a "Status" predicate.

SaberTail | a day ago

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

greggsy | 22 hours ago

The state numbers don’t seem to marry up, unless they’re indicative of something else?

snypher | 21 hours ago

WIPP isn't really a mine, right? More like an Amazon warehouse.

SaberTail | 4 hours ago

as far as MSHA is concerned it is. They take salt out of the ground to make room for the waste.

advisedwang | a day ago

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.

bombcar | 21 hours ago

And it doesn't include all of those.

nektro | 23 hours ago

I love the idea of a site like this existing but the expanding dots is a really bad way to visualize this.

HardwareLust | 23 hours ago

I saw your title and my first thought was "Why are there landmines in the US?" lol.

buildbot | 22 hours ago

Apparently there are in fact, 0. Publicly, at least.

simonw | 23 hours ago

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".)

maxbond | 23 hours ago

Once you learn how to spot these you'll see them everywhere on road trips and such.

greggsy | 22 hours ago

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’?

dboreham | 22 hours ago

The data set includes gravel pits. You can filter them out by selecting "Underground" for "Type".

defrost | 21 hours ago

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.

w10-1 | 23 hours ago

Can't see a thing. Dark on dark in Safari 26.3.

koshergweilo | 23 hours ago

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

buildbot | 22 hours ago

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.

AlotOfReading | 21 hours ago

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.

guessmyname | 22 hours ago

Oh! I thought it was landmines too and was very confused + concerned when I saw dots near where I live.

jedberg | 22 hours ago

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. :)

andrew_mason1 | 9 hours ago

hey now, landmines destroy stuff below them too

rpozarickij | 7 hours ago

I'm pretty sure for me "mining.fyi" wouldn't have created any associations with landmines (although "mines.fyi" does seem to match the contents of the website closer).

It'd be really interesting to see A/B testing results about what most people associate the word "mines" with (I wouldn't be surprised if that would be landmines in this day and age).

tastyfreeze | 22 hours ago

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/

bombcar | 21 hours ago

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).

greggsy | 22 hours ago

Is oil considered a mined mineral, or just shale oil?

pimlottc | 21 hours ago

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.

phillipseamore | 21 hours ago

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.

nick49488171 | 19 hours ago

Agreed. Huge annoyance when looking for routes on MountainProject as one example.

charv | 19 hours ago

Strong disagree — aggregate markers were super useful when browsing the map on mobile! Maybe need to add a flag for mobile vs. desktop, but the experience would be a lot worse on mobile without them.

pimlottc | 7 hours ago

I tried it on mobile. The clustering reduces it to 6 points for all of North America. My phone has over 3 million pixels, surely there’s room for more detail than that.

Firehawke | 17 hours ago

Strong disagree. Zoom in and the clusters break up. Without the clustering, the map is a total mess when zoomed out.

pimlottc | 7 hours ago

There’s a place for clustering but it doesn’t need to be so aggressive

alan_sass | 21 hours ago

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.

jeffbee | 20 hours ago

I looked for all my local mines and none of them are on here. It seems that all of the listed mines for California are stone quarries. It omits the numerous other mines.

LowLevelKernel | 20 hours ago

Why is it active post 2001? What purpose?

thirtygeo | 17 hours ago

Add Canada! Every province has a GIS repository of mines

doe88 | 12 hours ago

Very dense, there is no mineshaft gap left!

utool | 12 hours ago

I was trying to figure out where to send my son to work this summer. This makes it easier. Thank, very cool!

metalman | 9 hours ago

under 50, actual underground mines for metals, under 175 total open pit and underground mines for metal the real numbers for rock quarys * are hidden, and I must assume that they are also a small portion of the "total"

* sell actual blocks of stone vs gravel/fill/agregate

jmspring | 7 hours ago

There seem to be more quarries in where I looked (near Reno) than mines. 16:1 in Allegheny is not on there - interesting place. It’s still semi active.

lattrommi | 6 hours ago

Set state to Ohio. Set status to Abandoned.

Wonder why mines located in Ohio, show up in Greenland, Central America and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

On closer inspection, the Lat/Long are switched on some of these anomalies. I did not check them all.