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A RECLAMATION PROCEDURE SCHEME OF ABANDONED MINE SITES: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL

P.J.C Favas

Abstract

Mining is a strongly impacting anthropogenic activity, affecting to a greater or lesser extent the natural components. Thus, it is consensual that should be established a common practice that aims at the recovery of degraded mine sites. Otherwise, environmental balances can be irreversibly destroyed, with serious negative consequences for surrounding ecosystems, including humans. Therefore, the environmental reclamation of a mine site can be defined as the general process of repairing disturbed, damaged, degraded, or destroyed land with respect to its former or other productive uses. In this sense, reclamation is a broad concept encompassing somehow all the other terms commonly referred to (restoration, rehabilitation, replacement, remediation, mitigation), used alone or combined. The abandoned mine land reclamation process should encompass a design and implementation program that addresses multidisciplinary methods and techniques. Different reclamation strategies for degraded mine areas can be delineated, which commonly include the following sequential phases: 1) preliminary assessment, which allows the characterization of the current state of the site and the nature of the environmental risk; 2) the planned end-state of the site; 3) detailed environmental assessment to assess and characterize the nature and extent of negative impacts; 4) establishment of cleanup criteria for contaminants of concern; 5) development of a recovery work plan, which includes the techniques for the control, treatment and final disposal of contaminated tailings, waters, sediments and soils (remediation and mitigation), as well as the morphological and scenic configuration of the site; 6) final verification and monitoring of the end-state. The evaluation of reclamation alternatives should address the life-cycle impacts of the design, namely costs, resource requirements, ecosystem services, energy needs etc., involved in implementing both the cleanup operations and extensive monitoring programs. These phased methodologies have been applied successfully, particularly in more developed and industrialized countries, to return degraded and contaminated land to productive use.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2017/51/s20.002

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