Kunz and three co-authors reported mid-2023 that water has always been an important issue for mineral exploration and mining companies. In recent years, water-related issues have increasingly placed a constraint on the development of new projects, while mine closure issues have created billion-dollar legacies for governments. Water access and management creates not only project risks but also opportunities.
There are opportunities for geoscientists to help mitigate water-related issues early in a development, particularly for the economic geologists who play a crucial role in gathering data and geologic understanding during the early mine life cycle. Geologists can contribute to the understanding of baseline water systems and help to mitigate the potential effects that mining may pose for local ecosystems and to the communities that depend on them.
The authors concluded that water-related issues increasingly place a constraint on the development of new exploration and mining projects; in addition, the impacts of mining on water quality and supply can perpetuate well beyond the closure of a project. Geoscientists, and particularly economic geologists, have a critical role in reducing social and environmental effects across the mine life cycle.
From a practical perspective, this includes working with local communities from the earliest stage to understand their concerns associated with water and collecting baseline data to characterize the local hydrological and geochemical characteristics. These activities will contribute information to teams during prefeasibility study, to consider systems approaches for reducing the cumulative impacts of mining on water and tailings, and will be relevant to mitigate long-term water closure liabilities.
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