Mining for Closure: Policies, practises and guidelines for sustainable mining and closure of mines

by international bodies thus far to examine the is- sue and provide concrete guidance to national in- stitutions. Such guidance is required. At issue is the development of an effective and ef- ficient approach to the funding of closure that ena- bles mine rehabilitation and other environmental objectives to be achieved and also facilitates and encourages industry to comply with the require- ments of Government and the community (ANZ- MEC MCA, 2000, p. v) One place to commence is by examining how wide- spread the problem really is. A fact is clear – there are hundreds of thousands of orphaned and aban- doned mines worldwide (Post Mining Alliance, 2005; U.S. Department of Interior, 1998; van Zyl et al ., 2002b). Attempts at quantifying the number of abandoned sites yield astoundingly high figures. In the US alone around over 400 000 sites on Federal Land alone are reported (U.S. Department of Interior, 1998; UNEP, 2001). Balkau (2005a; 2005b) indicates that some 500 000 sites are prob- able with at least 100 000 demanding some ac- tion. The seriousness of the challenges in the US is highlighted in the quote below: Over 400,000 abandoned mines are found on Federal lands. In addition, many more are ad- jacent to Federal lands or are affecting water quality and biological resources under Federal stewardship. Defunct mines have contaminated public and private lands with more than 50 bil- lion tons of untreated mine waste. In the Appa- lachian coal region, acid mine drainage has de- graded more than 8,000 miles of streams and has left some aquatic habitats virtually lifeless. The cleanup and remediation of abandoned mine sites will require a huge investment of taxpayers’ dollars. In West Virginia alone, the coal industry is spending approximately $1 million each day to treat acid mine drainage (U.S. Department of Interior, 1998). Much closer (or indeed geographically a part of) to the SEE/TRB region, Slovakia, registered more than 17 000 old mining sites, while Hungary has reported some 6 000. In most countries however, data are scarce and we are forced to rely on anecdo- tal evidence. Further, the social and economic im- pacts of these sites have never been systematically evaluated. We can however, safely suppose they are substantial (Balkau, 2005a).

Having briefly addressed the multiple reasons for cessation of mining activities and having portrayed a number of courses of action that may eventuate, further discussion is relevant regarding orphaned sites. That is, sites with no identifiable owner. This topic is addressed in the following section. More rationalization of why mine sites are abandoned is provided in Section 4.3.

4.2

a special problem with “orphaned sites”

The whole topic of environmentally and socially re- sponsible mining is often a forward-looking debate focused upon present or future mines. However, we must nevertheless apply focus to the legacies of the past in the form of abandoned and orphan sites of minerals related activity. This is where the problem is at its most intractable, where the need for new action is greatest, and where the challenges of innovation and new action frameworks still need to be met (Balkau, 2005b). Among the environmental problems still to be con- fronted by the mining industry, that of abandoned mine sites, has been particularly slow to be tackled. Historically, it was common practice to ‘abandon’ a mine site when mineral extraction was completed. The land was left unvegetated and exposed, while waste materials were left in piles or haphazardly dumped into mine cavities or pits. There was lit- tle concern for the environment and no thought of how mining might adversely affect the surround- ing ecosystem in coming years (van Zyl, Sassoon, Fleury, & Kyeyune, 2002b). In many such cases, there is no clearly assigned (or assumed) responsible party or the legal, finan- cial and technical instruments being used, and the approaches to social issues, are inappropriate for such sites and their neighbouring communi- ties (Balkau, 2005a; Post Mining Alliance, 2005). Further, factors such as the potential costs of wide scale rehabilitation and the absence of criteria and standards for rehabilitation have delayed ac- tion by both the industry and by public authorities (Balkau, 2005a). Indeed, while there have been calls of varying intensity for action from interna- tional actors (European Environmental Bureau, 2000; Miller, 1998, 2005; Onorato et al ., 1997; Strongman, 2000) there have been few attempts

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MINING FOR CLOSURE