AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CHECKLIST FOR ASSESSING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF MINING (Invited Presentation)

Interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists and engineers with the integration of perspectives among researchers, regulators, and industrial representatives is essential for successful characterization and remediation of the hazards of mining. Effective interdisciplinary collaboration requires respect for, and a rational balance of, scientific and engineering expertise. To achieve the assessment goals, a checklist should include a clearly stated set of objectives beginning with the pre-mining and baseline conditions. Pre-mining conditions may be quite different from State regulatory standards and some States allow for that possibility although insufficient examples exist to guide such efforts. For historical mines, baseline provides current conditions and substantial effort may be required to determine pre-mining conditions. For new mines, a few years of collecting data is required to establish pre-mining conditions. Baseline and pre-mining conditions are a reference point for all future remedial options. Gathering data on water balances and flows for both surface and groundwater, and their compositions, is necessary to evaluate mass fluxes for water transport. Transient events such as rainstorms and snowmelt trigger more contaminant movement in a shorter period of time than that during low flow, requiring monitoring that can incorporate these events. Similar data collection is needed for contaminated sediments and soils. Data on air transport of contaminants is necessary for active mines and mineral processing activities. Static and kinetic tests have very limited usefulness for application to a large complex mine site and should be viewed with caution. Regular monitoring of site conditions should be required before and during mining and after closure to document maintenance of regulatory requirements to protect public health and the environment. A key component of any successful assessment is oversight by an interdisciplinary team that is free of any apparent or real conflicts of interest. Incorporating these guidelines into the assessment strategy should decrease costs and increase the success rate.