Mountain area: 3,500,000 m2
Average height of the mountain: 100 meters
A govt needs some area to build some stuff. I’m trying to figure out if it would be cheaper for them to remove a mountain (this area is owned by govt so its basically free real estate), or paying individual land owners ($15-20/m2).
Point of mountain removal is to make this place suitable for development (industrial area). So probably they don’t have to remove the entire mountain
If the mountain contains valuable minerals then the cost will be negative; you can make money by removing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining
Though, depending on the geology, you might not want to build a town on the resulting site. Sometimes heavy metals leach out of the disturbed rock, resulting in polluted surface water.
No minerals
You’re comparing moving 100 cubic meters of soil, so 200tons+ 10-15km away versus paying $20.
One of these is vastly more expensive than the other.
Governments would rather use eminent domain than literally move mountains.
You lose a mountain to get some shitty parking lots or whatever.
What?
It depends on what you can do with the fill coming off the mountain.
Good point. They can dump that stuff on mountains 10-15km away
I think he means, is there any value to it? Bc otherwise the cost is colossal and nobody’s gonna level a mountain just to develop on the land
Alternative to removing a mountain is to pay $70M to land owners
**So you’re saying cost of removing a mountain in given size would be higher than $70M? **
Yes, way, way more. Go look at how big a quarry is, compared to a mountain, and realize that took years and years of work from equipment that probably costs more than that by itself
If I read your measurements correctly, you’re talking about digging up over 350 million cubic metres of soil and rock, transporting them 15km and dumping them safely. Comparing that to the cost of paying the land owners gives you a budget of approximately $0.20 per cubic metre. Ignoring the digging costs, you’d have to check what your local rates for trucking bulk soil would be over that distance, but I suspect they’re more than that on their own.
Then you have the rather signicicant issue of what to do with the literal mountain of soil and rock you need to dispose of. Just dumping it is going to cause pretty serious changes to the local environment, not least of which would be a new mountain.
It’s highly dependent on local need, but sometimes projects need fill material, so at least some of it could be sold off to offset the cost.
