Word: martiki
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...biggest employer in the county is the "Tiki" mines: Martiki, Pontiki and Toptiki. The mines are all owned by Mapco, a Tulsa. Okia energy firm, which traditionally names all its mining operations after the Polynesian good-luck "Tiki" dolls. Martiki is the second largest mountain-top strip mine in the United States and therefore probably the world, shipping almost 3 million tons of coal each year. Martiki officials are clearly proud of their operation and sincere in their excitement at the prospect of resulting the landscape. Martiki's 18,000 acres cover two mountains on opposite sides of a steep...
...uninitiated, full-scale coal-mining is an incredible sight. Two hundred feet below where the hillside was a few years ago, dump trucks bigger than houses haul 175-ton loads of rock. The Martiki mining operation is centered around the "Mountain Mover," a power shovel about the size of a small airplane hanger. The shovel's huge bucket--which can easily hold a pickup truck--takes 76-cubic-foot bites out of the mountain 24 hours...
...only mixable areas on its lease Martiki will not exploit is a small cemetery currently standing on 60-foot diameter column of rock in which the valuable coal seams are clearly visible. Martik; was able to get permission to move most of the graves scattered over their leased area in small family plots but was denied access to that one pinnacle close to the company offices. The only way to visit the grave site now is by helicopter or on belay, but when Martiki is through, there will be a "nice road leading up there to a small parking...
...during and after mining, when the trees and topsoil are gone, water flows straight down the hillside, taking a good portion of the mountain with it. Silt has filled in many-of the area's streams, and the water table is deteriorating as previously reliable wells run dry. Martiki has built a large silt dam to capture the dirt in water running off the mining site, but even company engineers admit they can't trap...
| 1 |