How to Mitigate Environmental Impacts of Mining?

Metals and Mining Review | Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Environmental impacts of mining can affect the lives of living organisms, and it can be eliminated by adopting several modern approaches.

Fremont, CA: Environmental impacts of mining can occur due to direct and indirect mining practices. The significant potential effects associated with mining operations include erosion, contamination of water, soil and air, loss of biodiversity and more. Current mining operations are addressing these impacts by reclaiming areas of physical disturbance to stabilize soils containing metals or chemicals, prevent erosion, prevent water contamination, and controlling air emissions. Here are some significant practices that can mitigate environmental impacts.

Reclamation

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Reclamation requires the re-establishment of viable soils and crop growth at a mine site. The traditional approaches, including the addition of lime or other materials that can neutralize acidity, are likely to cost high to implement. Therefore, the real challenge is finding cost-effective approaches in the future. Some alternative options in the future include using sludge, an organic soil amendment - “biosolids” obtained from the municipal wastewater treatment process and growing plant species that are more tolerant of acidic conditions.

Water Treatment

Most mine wastewaters treatment process requires adding lime for their acidic nature to increase the pH level. With the increment in pH, dissolved metals precipitate and settle at the bottom of ponds, and also, coagulants and flocculants can be added to make large clumps from smaller particles. The reverse osmosis brine can be treated with evaporation or crystallization, thus allowing total usage of wastewater. Depending on the desired water quality, there might be required technologies to eliminate dissolved minerals like reverse osmosis and other membrane filtration, electro-deionization, ion exchange, adsorption media.

Soil Treatment

Besides acidity, high levels of metals in soils can be harmful to plants, animals and human lives. One common approach is to move the contaminated soil to specially designed repositories and is very expensive. However, this approach does not reduce the toxicity and volume, but the soil is relocated. Some best strategies that can be followed include, utilizing chemical methods to stabilize metal content in soils and to apply bactericides can halt the bacterial growth. Biloners like low permeability and compacted manure can act as barriers at the base of waste piles.

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