TIP: V tomto článku, stejně jako kdekoliv jinde na tomto webu, si můžete neznámá slovíčka jednoduše vyhledat ve slovníku tak, že na slovo v textu dvakrát kliknete tlačítkem myši.

Kaolin Mining in Georgia

In preliterate times, Georgia was half covered by the ocean. As a result, the former shore, the Fall Line, is rich in clays, specifically, kaolin. Kaolin is used to make magazine pages glossy, in cigarette filters, porcelain, and, yes, that's right, lipstick. Pregnant women around the fall line also eat kaolin, which I've never understood, but whatever.

When my dad was my age, some thirty years ago, he and his friends used to come to this one place in Twiggs county where the kaolin companies were mining. He told me how he and his friends used to jump off the tall, white cliffs into a deep blue pond. Of course, diving into clay, where you can get stuck, is never a good idea. After a couple of people died, Huber, the company that owned that particular mine, began to do something about trespassers. If people died in their mines, it was their fault, regardless of whether the people were supposed to be there or not.

Twenty years after it was closed, after people stopped jumping, he bought the lake. Now, he, my mom, and I (since I've moved back briefly) live there.
Twiggs County is dotted with lakes, all over, because of the rather unique way kaolin companies mine. I don't know whether they are legally forced to do it this way or whether they do it to prevent legislation, but it has terraformed Twiggs, among other counties, into something very different.

The land for kaolin mines is extensively researched. Not only does the kaolin have to be of a certain grade, but the where of the deposit has to match a long series of requirements. Once they find a place that matches their requirements, the company makes the first shallow cut. Kaolin, like coal in some places, is strip mined, meaning a thin strip of land is just pulled up, and everything usable is taken out. Like I said, kaolin-mining companies mine in an environmentally friendly way, if that's possible. So, they make the first cut. Everything they don't want, the dirt, the red clay, is turned into a big hill. The refuse from the second cut fills the hole left by the first cut, and so on, for about ten cuts. The final cut is the most special. This cut is positioned over so that, once completed, it will turn into a lake fed by a (semi-)natural spring. My parents' lake is like that. The only downside to this is that the resulting lake is an extremely accurate reflection of the water table. If there's a drought, your lake is low; conversely, if there's a lot of rain, your lake is high.

Almost all mine-formed lakes are dead lakes. Nothing lives in them because there's no inlet or outlet, no river or stream, to oxygenate the water. As a result, they're almost always a very clear blue. My parents' lake is green because my dad spends a lot of time fertilizing the lake so there's algae in it. The algae makes oxygen, which lets the fish my dad put in there breathe.