Mining activities have been carried on in remote areas without real focus on natural resources conservation.
Mining activities have been carried on in remote areas without real focus on natural resources conservation. The general priority was to take from natural environment whatever was possible at minimum cost for a limited period of time, using local resources (e.g. water and energy) as zero cost factors.
In regards to water use, mining activity normally required to extract large amount of fresh water, to use it for mineral processing and then to resend to the natural environment with basic chemical treatment to retain heavy metals. Sometimes large pond of polluted water have been abandoned in mining areas.
Another big issue is acid water. Also due to natural biological processes, mining can release large amount of acid water to the environment and this problem has not been seriously addressed up to now.
Today the situation is changing rapidly and mining industry must adapt to maintain long term sustainability.
- Many of these remote areas are rich in minerals, but at the same time they are much stressed in term of other natural resources. Water scarcity is a typical concern in Southern America (Chile, Peru), Southern Africa (Namibia, South Africa), Australia, Central Asia.
- Due to increasing population and increased life quality expectations, there is a strong pressure for natural resources conservation also in remote areas that only 50 years ago were basically desert areas.
- Most good quality fresh water is needed for civil and agricultural uses and less water will be available for industrial uses.
- Large mining companies must improve their public image and Governments relationships to avoid overreaction and implementation of extremely tight new environmental regulations. See as example what is happening in Perù, where new regulations for waste water discharge are implementing discharge limits that are probably far too conservative.
Most industries already reacted to this situation in the most logical way, that is reducing water consumption and increasing water reuse. Basically industry invest into technology to promote efficient resource use.
It is important to notice how it happened for example for the textile industry, that for sure is not the most high tech industry. Water reuse, up to ZLD (zero liquid discharge) approach, has been by now implemented in many large factories in India, China and now also North Africa and Central/South America simply because it was no more possible for them to compete with civil / agriculture on natural water use.
Up to now mining industry has been very slow in implementing water reuse concept, often referring a short term view idea of “let's go on until we can and then fly away”.
Today this approach is not acceptable and even not economical.
Public opinion will no more accept irresponsible use of natural resources by mining industry and has now powerful tools (media, legal, etc.) to fight against it. Promoting water reuse will increase mining sustainability, make it acceptable to public opinion and finally allow to make a mining site more exploitable long term.
More than this, there is another subtle, still very important reason to invest into water reuse technologies. Basically, water reuse is one of the big driver in the industry towards technological development and middle term it will bring large economic advantages.
An interesting example is acid water treatment to avoid environmental pollution. As mining industry is a net acid consumer, natural sulphuric acid recovery will obviously reduce substantially chemicals supply to the mining site. Considering that we are often talking about remote locations, chemicals reduction is a big economical advantage, where sometimes transportation cost largely exceed the chemical's cost itself.
Finally, we believe that mining activity cannot be hindered as a whole.
Simply we must obtain that mining activity is operated in the proper way, investing into technologies that ensure efficient and long term sustainable resources use. Technological development will be beneficial to all stakeholders and bring benefits to all of them.
Particularly in regards to water, water reuse and if possible ZLD (zero liquid discharge), will be a critical issue in a mining site development, because water is the most important resource in our environment and its long term conservation is a key point for long term development.
We had opportunity to evaluate for example specific issues for mining site in Namibia, possibly aiming to ZLD approach. In fact for example Swakop River basin is very rich in minerals, including Uranium, but provides a very limited fresh water supply. The whole area is under water stress and completely rely on this water basin or on sea water desalination plants that are located more than 50 km aways on the coastal area.
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