MINE TAILINGS: WASTE, CONTAMINATED RESOURCE OR VALUABLE SOIL? APPROACH OF REVALUE MINE TAILINGS FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN MARKET
One of South Africa’s economical supporting legs is obvious the mining sector. For many years the economy was the focus of all mine related actions without any thoughts of the time after the economic boom. Nowadays the profit is moderate and some of the former leading mining companies are closed or are planning to stop the mining process. Related to the closing procedure the mine company has to make sure that the property and the environment is free of any serious pollution and similar to the former and aboriginal condition. While the production process changed the surface and underground structure, produced lakes of decanting and polluted ground and surface water and huge tailings of highly contaminated mine soil were left over the extensiveness of environmental impact is not known yet. Even the South African environmental law has no detailed definition if contaminated mine soil is waste, a contaminated resource or valuable soil. The approach done by the North-West University in collaboration with the University of Potsdam to revalue mine tailings for the South African market was a successful step forward in mine closure and towards an environmental responsible process of mining. Two different procedures impacting the environment were determined: the closure of currently processing mines and the application for new mines to take up their work. While the first procedure-the closure of mine activity-is a clear defined situation, the second procedure is defined by the purpose and understanding of the material itself as waste. For mine closure the most important fact is to reduce contamination and environmental damage to a minimum. This can be reached by methods of soil amelioration, detoxification and forestation. Recent research on mine tailings could prove an improvement of soil quality by more than 50％ related to the further use.
O. POLLMANN S. MEYER O. BLUMENSTEIN L. VAN RENSBURG
School of Environmental Science and Development, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus (PUK), Institute for Geo-Ecology, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25,14476 Potsdam, Germa
国际会议
北京
英文
447-452
2010-05-17（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）