PROGRESS ON THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY’S (USGS) NATIONAL INVENTORY OF NON-FUEL MINE WASTE FEATURES

Increasing demand for clean energy technologies such as electric car batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels is driving a need for greater supplies of critical minerals. Critical minerals are mineral materials that are essential to the economy, national security of the U.S., and may face potential disruption in supply. Many of these commodities may occur in base and precious metal deposits but may not have been previously recovered, instead being lost to mine wastes. Additionally, the average grade of economic metallic mineral deposits has decreased over the last several decades, driving interest in the viability of mine waste as a resource. However, potential recovery of commodities from mine waste requires comprehensive information on the location and extent of those wastes.

With funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the USGS and state geological surveys have begun work to develop a database of mine waste features. Current compilation efforts integrate spatial data capture and attribution of waste features using publicly available information. The USGS mineral deposit database project (USMIN) has started populating the national database with waste features that have areas >200,000 m². Features have been identified using historical USGS topographic maps, the GRID-Arendal Global Tailings Portal, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Inventory of Dams, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Facility Registry Service. Primary feature types captured include tailings-pond, tailings-undifferentiated, mine dump, and tailings-placer. When available, information about commodity, deposit type, volume, and other characterization details are also recorded in “geology” and “resource” tables related to the waste features. Currently, the database has 286 mine waste features at 85 sites throughout Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. USMIN is working with collaborators from 13 states to incorporate data from their own mine waste inventories and statewide databases into the national inventory. Continued development of this database will aid in our understanding of potential recovery of critical minerals from current and future mine waste materials in the United States.