Land Reclamation and Remediation

The ultimate objective of post-mine land-use and reclamation planning is to identify appropriate alternate land uses to which mined land could be put. This will ensure that land-use and morphology of the location will be capable of supporting either the prior land-use or pre-mining environment. The main challenge is usually, the choice of variables that must be considered in deciding a particular post-mining land-use. Literature reviews were conducted to identify the major factors needed to be considered in the selection of a post-mining land-use. This paper also looks at the most commonly practiced and accepted post-mining land-use techniques. Factors identified as important in the selection process include land resources (e.g. physical, biological and cultural characteristics), ownership, type of mining activity, legal requirements, location, needs of the community, economic, environmental, technical and social factors. In a broad categorization, all post-mining land-uses could be placed under one of the following land-use: agriculture, forestry, lake or pool, intensive recreational land-use, non-intensive recreational land-use, conservation and pit backfilling. However, the objective of any particular post-mining land use should be achieving economic and sustainable outcomes which meet human wants and needs, and protect life and the environment.

"Look at me - I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway... I've been doing fjords all my life...for a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award.”  Slartibartfast from the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

Mining is a major global industry that requires the moving of considerable volumes of earth and rock (overburden) to win the valuable ore prior to mineral extraction and processing. As a result of this process, new landscapes are created, both extracted voids and overburden piles, as well as infrastructure for management of mine operations, waste water, tailings, other raw materials, transportation, and extreme rainfall events. Resource companies must develop and obtain regulatory approval for detailed plans that manage this displaced material through all phases of the life of mine, and rehabilitate the site at the time of closure (including landform stability, revegetation and ongoing management).

Individual mine sites operate in long time frames (10-50 years) with several mines often operating in the same region, generating cumulative overburden volumes and heavily altering the original landscape. These impacts are universally framed as a negative consequence of the industry, especially by modern society that values natural (and some agricultural) landscapes as pristine and almost sacred. Overburden and tailings are also seen as a problem, and a significant business cost to mining practise.

This paper looks to investigate perceptions of mining and post-mining landscapes, questioning the aesthetically driven emphasis on the ‘natural’. It proposes instead an opportunity to reframe the way we look at overburden and landscape impacts from mining, exploring the possibility of imagined post-mine landscapes unburdened by traditional aesthetic expectations. These landscapes, to be conceived by regional stakeholder round tables, have the capacity to be built by regional mining consortia as a foundation for sustainable post mining economies.

Post-mine regeneration offers both the motivation and the basic materials to create an altogether new environment from a blank slate. Few circumstances allow the opportunity to truly explore a re-envisioning of the land on a huge scale, and the possibilities merit serious consideration.