Acid drainage from mines: should you mine, treat in perpetuity, or run for the cover of a social licence?

At university we formed a trio: all bright, but otherwise different.  One lazy and impractical; one energetic and pragmatic; one imaginative and socially responsible.  We went our separate ways in the world: to Australia, Canada, the United States, and the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.  Occasionally we still interact.  Just as now when I review a paper by one of the trio; and rightly he deserves my review for being so bold as to write the truth that offends. 

Of course he will respond that I distort his pragmatic perspective and tell my own truth which is not his truth.  But that ever was the argument over beers, so why not continue now over old age? 

The background to this blog posting is a long review I have just posted on TechnoMine.  In that review I write about a number of the papers presented to eighty or so people in Tasmania last week.  At a conference on the hoary old topic of acid mine drainage and acid rock drainage.  I avoid the acronyms ARD and/or AMD.  They looks so innocuous and innocent, whereas the topic is anything but innocuous & innocent.

The many fine papers presented at the conference cover the usual range: testing; characterization; neutralization; liners; covers; comingling; co-disposal; etc.  The usual list of topics you would expect when people gather to talk about stopping the flow of acid water from mines to receiving bodies—water, animal, and human.  Unfortunately there is also a lot of guff on social licence to mine and sustainability and all those hoary old war cries of belligerence  and propaganda.

But the aspect of the papers that caught my attention, is the question posed by Ward Wilson of the University of British Columbia:  Why have we not solved the acid mine and acid rock drainage problems yet?   And the subsidiary question: Can we?

In one truly bold and brave paper, Mike Gowan and his fellow workers at Golder Associates in Australia say that if a mine cannot prove that the value of the ore body greatly exceeds the cost of perpetually treating the acid drainage from the mine and its waste piles, then they mine should not open.   Of course that is exactly what Scoble and his cohorts concluded about the Kemess North Mine.  But it is one thing for a tenured professor to tell the truth in public; it is another for an old-grind consultant to do the same.  He must be nearing retirement?

I have written a bit or two on management of acid drainage from mines.  All rather impractical; merely the cogitations of the lazy.  But Gowan attacks the issue head on.  Bravo for him. 

In one of the other papers from the conference we are told again about that miracle production soon to appear from INAP:  a Global Acid Rock Drainage Guide.   It is being put together by Golder Associates in Canada.  It will be truly fascinating to see if Golder in Canada agrees with Golder in Australia.  If they do, then maybe we will know they speak the truth.  If they do not they and we will be plunged into but another Obama versus Clinton scrap of expensive political rhetoric.  Or fall into an acidic lake, like below:

Incidently this photo is by Gord McKenna of BGC.  A good engineer as well as a tallented photographer!  It shows the Island Copper pit–I am not sure if it is plagued by acidity, although I know it is destined for long-term care. 

PS:  The best web resource on the topic of dealing with contaminated mine water is the U.S. EPA’s Management and Treatment of Water from Hard Rock Mines