Foreword
Our modern global economy impacts the environment in many ways, including the groundwater environment, in support of humanity’s many essential activities including agriculture, urbanization, and extraction of fossil fuels and minerals. This book: Hydrogeology and Mineral Resource Development is about mining in the groundwater context. There is an expectation that fossil fuel production will soon decline as other forms of energy replace fossil fuels, but with the global population increasing by 2 to 3 billion people in the coming decades, mining will be essential in the long term.
Of these essential activities, mining does not have the most severe impact on groundwater, but the complexities are extreme because a typical mine has a four-phase life cycle, each one much different from the others. First, the exploration phase disturbs the terrain in order to access the site and drill exploratory holes. The next phase is mine construction including excavation of the earth and creation of drainages to dewater the mine zone. This is followed by mining operations with removal of large volumes of rock and earth in order to extract the ore. Finally, the mine is closed, at which time the disrupted, reorganized landscape is left for nature to cope with the disturbed conditions. As recently as the late twentieth century this last crucial phase received little attention. Responsible mine closure is as, or more, challenging than the mining phase because the goal is to arrange the new landscape for minimal environmental harm over the next millennia.
This book presents a broad vision of how mining interacts with groundwater and vice versa to provide the reader with a vision of the issues and challenges, which are exacerbated by the occurrence of mining in all climatic conditions from arctic to tropical, all terrains from mountains to plains, and involving disturbances ranging from small holes in the ground to vast excavations of many square kilometers. Mining impacts are complex due to weathering reactions between water and the earth materials left behind (tailings and waste rock) after the ore is removed. These materials are exposed to geochemical conditions that are much different than conditions throughout the geologic period when the material rested below ground surface before mining.
The author of this book: Dr. Leslie Smith, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, has participated in leading research concerning the impacts of mining and restoration on groundwater and surface water. As part of his consulting work, he has observed mining impacts at many locations around the globe, hence this book is superbly illustrated with photographs that bring the reality of mining to our attention given that so few of us witness mining in person.
John Cherry, The Groundwater Project Leader
Guelph, Ontario, Canada, March 2021