Mine Closure

Contents: Preface. 1. Prologue. 2. Impacts of mining activities on environmental components and their importance in mine closure planning. 3. Legal, social and economic necessity of mine closure. 4. Environmental standards. 5. Mine closure planning for underground mines. 6. Mine closure planning for opencast mines. 7. Dealing with mine fires while closing the mines. 8. Integration of mine closure in mine planning. 9. Post closure hazards. 10. Post closure ecology and its management. 11. Economics of mine closure. 12. Closure of small and abandoned mines. Appendices. Bibliography.

"Mining is basically an intermediate use of land it causes various impacts on all the components of environment. In most situations the impacts on land are severe it may become useless for any economic use after mining. Though this is known right from the inception of the mining activities that the efforts towards developing the land after mining were negligible. This has resulted in devastation of mined out land in many locations in the country. Keeping in view the importance and the necessity of development of land areas the legislation have been formulated for mine closure. The legislation are recent and not many mines have been closed in accordance with the provision therein.

Closure planning at all the stages in a mine's life is important to the economics of a mine and such a planning results in a large cost savings.

This book contains the aspects of mine closure planning and implementation in the opencast and underground mines, with special reference to the mining situations in the India, have been outlined.

The book is expected to be useful to the practical mining engineers and environmentalists in mine planning and design. It should also be useful to the researchers and students of mining and environment."