Sustainability
Right: Birds and plants aren’t the only things to thrive at Reefton – the local visitors’ centre has been revamped, drawing in more tourism to the area.
Opening page: Reefton comprises more than 800,000 new trees.
The emperor’s new close With their rickety carts and deep, mysterious shafts, disused mines have long been seared into the popular imagination. Study the statistics and this fascination makes a grim kind of sense. In the US, for instance, the Bureau of Land Management estimates there are around 500,000 such places – so many, indeed, that some aren’t even mapped. It’s the same story across the Atlantic. In England alone, there are around 13,000 abandoned mines, while Northern Ireland plays host to some 2,000 more. One 2011 study suggested there were perhaps a million disused mines worldwide, spanning everything from narrow Victorian shafts to sprawling pits occupying hundreds of acres.
“We work really strongly with the community, understanding their needs, understanding the barriers and challenges that they face.”
Meg Kauthen 500,000
The number of abandoned mines in the US.
US Bureau of Land Management 1 million
The total number of disused mines across the world.
Coal and Peat Fires: A Global Perspective, Volume 1: Coal– Geology and Combustion
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Nor are these blights especially hard to understand. In a cut-throat industry predicated on profit, where extraction can last as little as five years, there has often been minimal incentive to reclaim a mine once operations end. That’s doubly true, says Meg Kauthen, given the inadequacy of many regulations. As the sustainability designer at Business for Development explains, even rich countries like the US have antiquated, poorly enforced mine-closure laws, none of which offer much protection to either “communities or ecosystems”. It goes without saying, Kauthen continues, that the situation is even more challenging in the developing world. Quite aside from events at Ermelo, she clearly has a point. As recently as December 2021, to give one example, 162 people died in a landslide at a jade mine in Myanmar – with many of the victims living in abandoned pits. Nor are tailings crashes, of the sort that regularly hit Myanmar, the only menace to afflict unrehabilitated mining sites. Arguably the most insidious to residents involves toxic waste. To produce
just one ounce of gold, operators must extract up to 91t of ore, while the mining process laces the remains with cyanide. It goes without saying that if this material isn’t disposed of carefully, it can wreak havoc long after a mine formally closes. In 2017, researchers found that Native Americans living near depleted uranium mines were more likely to suffer from kidney disease. A lack of planning can spark other long-lasting problems too. After trying to burn the landfill from an abandoned coal mine nearby, residents of one Pennsylvania town inadvertently set a fire that rages to this day. That may not sound so bad – until you realise the blaze began in 1962. Of course, it’d be wrong to imply that post-mining rehabilitation is a totally unknown concept. On the contrary, major companies have reflected on the afterlife of their operations since at least the early 1980s. Yet, that hardly means the industry has nothing to work on. The problem, explains Greg Scanlan, has traditionally been one of focus. “The process was far more mechanical, less inclusive of the general community, employees and other social effects or opportunities,” explains Scanlan, head of health, safety and environment at OceanaGold. If this technique can bear economic fruit, such as by providing grazing land for livestock, it could also leave workers and their families destitute, as their sole source of income was snatched away with nothing to replace it. And though this style of rehabilitation precludes the worst environmental woes, focusing only on intensive pastoralism, as has sometimes been common in mining hotspots like Australia, can still leave the soil frail and unnutritious.
A gold standard Visit Reefton and you might not even realise what came before. Framed by the soaring peaks of New Zealand’s South Island, this is a place of wondrous beauty. Over 800,000 new trees, from silver beech to manuka, have turned the place into a rich forest, while a nearby lake has attracted hosts of flapping waterfowl. Nor are birds and plants the only ones to
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
OceanaGold
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