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Short abstract:

This paper extends existing studies of ‘soil microbiopolitics’ from agricultural to mining soilscapes to examine how forms of encounter between humans and microorganisms are recognised and regulated at Wheal Maid, an Acid Mine Drainage site in Cornwall, UK, known as 'the Cornish Mars'.

Long abstract:

Wheal Maid, in Cornwall’s Poldice Valley, is an Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) site and one of the most contaminated locations in Britain. Known as ‘the Cornish Mars’ for its distinctive red soilscape, arsenic and other heavy metals are leaching from the site’s tailing lagoons into the valley soils and waterways. Bacterial communities mediate the hazards and relationships between soils, people and the wider ecosystem at Wheal Maid in little understood ways; certain species may have a role in remediating such landscapes by helping to detoxify the soil. Interest in this research is growing due to nearby lithium reserves, in which many see energy for the future of electric vehicles as well as a chance to revive the skilled and well-paid employment of Cornwall’s industrial past and the communities who depended on it. These issues are of global significance, with tens of thousands of AMD sites across the world, and the cost of remediation estimated at $100bn globally.

This paper examines how forms of encounter between humans and microorganisms are recognised and regulated in the service of Wheal Maid’s industrial pasts and futures. The site’s anthropogenic soils have arisen through entwined social and ecological histories, where microbes act to constitute contested versions of the location’s past and future as well as its ongoing materiality. Extending existing studies of ‘soil microbiopolitics’ from agricultural to mining soilscapes, this paper focuses on contested forms of extraction and regeneration that emerge from the interplay of human and microbial communities within ‘the Cornish Mars’.