Mine Rehabilitation and Closure; Prevention of negative mining legacies – a mine rehabilitation perspective on legislative changes in Queensland

Mine Rehabilitation and Closure Prevention of negative mining legacies – a mine rehabilitation perspective on legislative changes in Queensland by Corinne Unger MAusIMM and Dr Alex Lechner, Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland; and Dr Ian Wilson MAusIMM, Consultant, Sustainable Resource Sciences Introduction The Greentape Reduction Act 2012 (Qld) will remove the requirement for an Environmental Management Plan (EM Plan) in the interests of streamlining approvals. The EM Plan is currently the mechanism for the development of mine site rehabilitation plans. In light of these recent legislative changes we have conducted a brief review of legislation and policy in the context of prevention of mining legacies. Following this review, an examination of broad-scale trends in rehabilitation is undertaken and recommendations are provided to guide data gathering in order to evaluate the success of existing policy in delivering good rehabilitation and closure outcomes. Finally, a method for evaluating the ‘maturity’ of regulatory controls for land rehabilitation and closure is presented, using a risk-based approach. Evolution of environmental legislation for mining in Queensland Comprehensive environmental legislation was first introduced to mining in Queensland in the early 1990s under the Mineral Resources Act 1989 (MR Act). The MR Act required an Environmental Management Overview Strategy (EMOS), formalised in the 1995 amendment to the MR Act and a Plan of Operations which provided information for the Minister to set the financial assurance. The EMOS was a life-of-mine environmental strategy that contained commitments that formed the basis for environmental compliance assessment. This was a useful document for industry and regulators alike as it was in line with leading practices. It provided life-of-project planning that integrated rehabilitation 60 February 2013 as well as closure planning and postmining land use considerations into staged operational plans. In 2000, amendments to the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (EP Act) replaced the EMOS with an (EM Plan) and required rewriting of the commitments as conditions in the Environmental Authority (EA). There is however, no process which regularly compares areas proposed in a Plan of Operations to be disturbed and rehabilitated, with those areas actually disturbed and rehabilitated. The company can submit an amended Plan of Operations to change the area or the time period as long as the change is consistent with the EM Plan and EA and does not extend the term of the Plan of Operations beyond five years. From a compliance perspective the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) is generally only concerned if the area disturbed exceeds the area proposed to be disturbed. A more comprehensive evaluation of ‘rehabilitation quality’ involving per formance against targets/ completion criteria is important for identifying potential problems early in the life of a mine and to highlight high achievers in the industr y. Role of the Environmental Management Plan The EM Plan described rehabilitation commitments and other environmental management procedures proposed by the company during the environmental assessment phase for mining projects in Queensland. It was required to define how a mine would ensure sustainable post-mining land use that does not pollute and is stable (as per DEHP guidelines www.ehp.qld. gov.au/land/mining/pdf/guide-rehabrequirements-mining-em1122.pdf). Feature Sponsor While many mining companies may already prepare mine closure plans in line with their own internal standards (and accounting requirements for publicly listed companies), the EM Plans generally provided a rehabilitation framework. Companies commonly provide only annual rehabilitation planning in their Plan of Operations. The Environmental Protection (Greentape Reduction) and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2012 (Greentape Reduction Act) will remove the requirement for an EM Plan in the interests of streamlining approvals. By removing the EM Plan, the clearly defined process for proposing mine rehabilitation frameworks will now have to be written into the EA as this is required by assessing departments. In turn this will increase the length and complexity of the EA. Rehabilitation is impor tant in an operational sense for a number of reasons: Minimising disturbance footprint Progressive rehabilitation ensures that the mine footprint is kept as small as possible and consequently minimises the impacts from mining on biodiversity values, grazing or other productive uses by reinstating these productive land uses as soon as possible. Minimising offsite impacts Effective progressive rehabilitation minimises wind and water erosion by integrating stable drainage design (including sediment control and wetlands) with staged revegetation so offsite dust impacts as well as water quality impacts from suspended sediment and dissolved contaminant loads are mitigated. Mine Rehabilitation and Closure Minimising costs By placing waste materials in their appropriate location in line with postmining landform design, considerable ef ficiencies are gained during operations by rehabilitating these landforms as they develop, avoiding the need to double handle materials or re-shape landforms later. Continual improvement of rehabilitation quality Annual or progressive rehabilitation must have objectives and completion criteria clearly defined and agreed for progressive rehabilitation to continually improve (for compliance with environmental management systems ISO 14001). Research trial areas can be established and the knowledge gained will inform future rehabilitation. Ecosystems require long time periods to establish and demonstrate sustainability, a requirement for regulator y approval. Stakeholder confidence Progressive rehabilitation also instils confidence in stakeholders (governments and communities) that mining companies know how to under take successful rehabilitation and can demonstrate long-term sustainability. Fur thermore, it demonstrates that they have – and are meeting – clear land use objectives and success criteria. Mines that under take successful progressive rehabilitation are more likely to achieve regulator y approval in order to relinquish their mining lease at the end of operations. Reporting of proposed disturbance and rehabilitation In Queensland, proposed land disturbance and progressive rehabilitation are repor ted by companies within the Plan of Operations to the regulator y authority, Depar tment of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP). Each mine submits a plan covering a period which can be as short as 12 months and as long as five years ahead. This plan is used to evaluate the financial assurance (or rehabilitation bond) which is generally provided to the government in the form of a bank guarantee. The amount is determined in accordance with a DEHP guideline that has replaced the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) 1992 policy under the Minerals Resources Act. The amount required is based on third-party costs for the maximum disturbance within the planning period although a discount of up to 30 per cent is allowed based on the financial competence of the company, environmental per formance and progressive rehabilitation. DEHP relies almost entirely on information provided by the companies as only a ver y small number of these Plans of Operations are audited. The Environmental Authority The EA provides a summar y of the conditions applied following the environmental assessment process. However, it now lacks background documentation previously provided in the EMOS and EM Plan. The loss of context is inevitable when a five volume Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), for example, is reduced to perhaps a 20 page EA. In this process much has to be left out. In the past the EM Plan was able to capture the rehabilitation commitments to ensure they were not lost in this process. With the removal of the EM Plan via the Greentape Reduction Act the onus will be on the mining industr y (and its environmental personnel) as well as individual regulator y officers to ensure rehabilitation is adequately addressed. Under the amended legislation, if an EIS is required for a new mine there will be no additional public comment on an EA (to shor ten the time line) which could potentially cause confusion regarding rehabilitation outcomes as the EIS may have considered several rehabilitation options. Feature Sponsor There is also potential for inconsistent application of requirements and ambiguity. The former EM Plan process provided clarity and transparency for the mining sector and the community regarding what rehabilitation was proposed. In future, the rehabilitation requirements will have to be detailed in the EA conditions. Poulin (2009) obser ved that environmental regulator y transparency was more impor tant to industr y than less stringent regulation when he compared financial assurance requirements for three jurisdictions (Nevada, Quebec and Western Australia). This was based on the Fraser Institute’s (2009) ranking system as a measure of how attractive jurisdictions are for mining companies. The Fraser Institute sur vey of metal mining and exploration companies is a repor t card to governments on how attractive their policies are from the point of view of an exploration manager. This sur vey has been conducted since 1997 and represents the opinions of executives and exploration managers in mining and mining consulting companies operating around the world. Clearly this is an area requiring fur ther research in Australia, to determine how to make environmental legislative processes as streamlined and transparent as possible without reducing regulator y per formance. Publicly accessible rehabilitation data in Queensland In order to access the success or failure of legislation and policy it is impor tant that the appropriate quantitative date be gathered. A web search indicated that in Queensland there are no web sites or links to repor ts that are easily accessible, nor are there summaries showing how rehabilitation is proceeding in the hundreds of large mine sites that are operating (with some being in operation for decades). The search revealed a Powerpoint February 2013 61 Mine Rehabilitation and Closure presentation by Rogerson (2007) (www.fba.org.au/news/downloads/ cqminingforum_michael-rodgerson. pdf) that contained the information in Figure 1 and a paper by Wilson (2006). In order to see if progressive rehabilitation is keeping pace with disturbance and to evaluate how effective policy changes are, it can be useful to plot the trends and indicate where specific changes occurred. Figure 2 shows the trends. Rehabilitation trends 1990-2006 In the presence of limited data, one conclusion that can be drawn is that while the total area of progressive rehabilitation has increased significantly since 1990 (Figure 1), for metalliferous mines the area of rehabilitation as a proportion of total disturbance fell from about 41 per cent in 1990 to about 32 per cent (in 2006) (Figure 2). However, for coal mining rehabilitation as a proportion of mined land rose from about 14 per cent in 1990 to about 22 per cent in 2002 and now appears to also be declining. More recent data may show a continuing decline as a result of the recent development of many new open cut coal mines. These statistics are generally based on a definition of ‘rehabilitated’ that required all earthworks, topsoil placement and seeding/planting to be completed, but does not imply Figure 1. Rehabilitation statistics (DERM) (Rogerson, 2007). Figure 2. Percentage of disturbed mine land which has been rehabilitated (Rogerson, 2007). 62 February 2013 Feature Sponsor that the rehabilitation was successful (in meeting a particular measure of quality) and thus may overestimate successful rehabilitation. Other publications have used dif ferent definitions of rehabilitation and presented less complete data. Ver y little of the rehabilitated area has had regulator y sign-off/approval. Leading practice policies to avoid negative mining legacies Leading practice specifies that mine closure planning should commence during early project planning and be integrated with all aspects of operations from exploration onwards (eg ANZMEC/MCA, 2000, ICMM 2008). Last year Western Australia (WA) introduced Mine Closure Guidelines (DMP/EPA, 2011) requiring all new mining applications to include a Mine Closure Plan (from 2011) and for existing projects, Rehabilitation and Closure Plans should be submitted for review in line with the guidelines by 2014. These plans will be reviewed on a default three year cycle. The guidelines recognise and require rehabilitation planning, particularly progressive rehabilitation as an important aspect in mine closure planning to ensure successful closure outcomes. The guidelines apply to all new mines covered by Special Agreement Acts, as part of the formal environmental impact assessment process in WA. There is no legislative requirement for a mine closure plan in Queensland. Leading practice also requires rehabilitation to commence as soon as practicable. Amendments to the EP Act in 2006 provided companies with cer tainty that successful progressive rehabilitation would not require enhancement should rehabilitation requirements change in the future. This does not appear to have increased progressive rehabilitation. More research on the rate and success of progressive rehabilitation is needed to provide feedback on key policy decisions by governments and greater access Mine Rehabilitation and Closure to the data is required, par ticularly where communities are demanding both more information and higher standards of rehabilitation than in the past. A measure of jurisdictional maturity for prevention of mining legacies Evidence based policy development requires good measurement of appropriate data in order to evaluate the impacts of policy changes and to identify when a policy review may be required. A good example of this is the Vegetation Management Act 1999 where ver y good spatial data sets have enabled the impacts of policy changes to be measured and evaluated and published in the State of the Environment Repor t (DERM, 2011). The Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation (CMLR) is working toward the establishment of a national hub for abandoned mines in Australia, to assist with the implementation of the national policy – ‘Strategic Framework for Management of Abandoned Mines in the Minerals Industry’ (MCMPR/ MCA, 2010). Recent changes to legislation in Queensland have been reviewed from a rehabilitation perspective to evaluate how resilient Queensland legislation is in preventing new legacy sites. As accurate rehabilitation data is not being captured we don’t know how effective rehabilitation policies are in Queensland. Legacy sites can result when there is a mismatch between community and regulator y expectations or between regulator y expectations and industries per formance. Gathering data and undertaking research to inform policy on rehabilitation Within Queensland, making data available in the public domain, on the areas of disturbance and areas of rehabilitation would provide a useful basis for research and assessment of whether policy is successful. Fur thermore, providing information on rehabilitation quality in terms of the meeting of completion criteria would also be a useful measure of per formance and provide more assurance to the community. With the removal of the EM Plan the rehabilitation conditions in the EA take on far greater significance and are likely to require more effort from government to develop, with little or no requirement for input from stakeholders. Companies will need to engage more fully with their stakeholders to agree on post-mining land uses and completion criteria to measure success. Using a risk based approach, the national policy has been used as a basis for developing an abandoned mine ‘jurisdictional maturity char t’ (Unger et al, 2012). Table 1 provides an over view of key elements within the chart. Table 2 shows how the chart describes maturity ranked from 1) vulnerable to 5) resilient for the fifth categor y of the chart: ‘legislation, policy and guidance to prevent new abandoned mines’. From the initial desktop review there is an indication that for some aspects of legislation and policy to prevent abandoned/legacy mines, Queensland is largely in the vulnerable and reactive categories, with some aspects being compliant. Access to rehabilitation data and funds for independent research would help to expand on this preliminar y review to provide a useful basis for decision making regarding rehabilitation and closure policy in Queensland and other jurisdictions in Australia. Mature program conception model Strategic framework chapters 1 Data/Information management 2 Jurisdiction-wide knowledge of health, safety, environment, and socio-economic Chapter 2: Data collection impacts and management 3 Site specific rehabilitation and management plans for high risk sites 4 Leadership, legislation, policy and guidance to address AMs 5 Legislation, policy and guidance to prevent new AMs 6 Risk assessment and prioritisation of programs 7 Abandoned mine program leadership and capacity/skills 8 Funding; sources, mechanisms and resources 9 Focus on beneficial post-mining land/ water uses 10 Heritage conser vation – indigenous cultural and industrial Chapter 3: Risk assessment and management Chapter 1: Valuing abandoned mines 11 Secondar y mining opportunities 12 Resourcing in partnership 13 Stakeholder engagement at jurisdiction level 14 Communication and networks Chapter 4: Resourcing and partnership opportunities Chapter 5: Information sharing and ‘leading practice’ Table 1. Elements of a mature abandoned mine program referenced to the Strategic Framework. Feature Sponsor February 2013 63 Mine Rehabilitation and Closure Legislation policy and guidance to prevent abandoned/legacy mines Vulnerable (1) • • • • • • • • • no regulator y requirement for progressive rehabilitation no mine closure planning requirements no system for data collection and review to inform success of policies in meeting no access to data in the public domain on industr y per formance on rehabilitation and/or closure no clear approvals process lack of alignment between community expectations and policy little or no rehab/closure skills and knowledge in regulator y department little or no bond or financial assurance requirements large complex sites have underestimated liabilities Reactive (2) • • • • • • • • some regulator y requirements for rehabilitation and/or closure but on a site by site basis review of data from time to time on an ad hoc basis to track rehabilitation and closure status Some data in the public domain but may not have per formance measures limited consultation with community on rehab/closure policy some basic rehab/closure training rehabilitation bond is discounted, represents 20-50 per cent of liability responsibilities between departments defined but gaps may exist review of some abandoned mines to understand mechanisms for failure Compliant (3) • • • • • • • • progressive rehabilitation is a regulator y requirement closure planning is a requirement from environmental assessment phase, updated during operations jurisdiction-wide database exists to capture rehabilitation and closure data, updated annually key data indicators accessible to public an estimate for total areas of disturbance and rehabilitation can be determined relatively easily data are used to evaluate success or other wise of policy changes and rectify defined approvals process for rehabilitation defined Proactive (4) In addition to compliant: • regular review of rehab/closure liabilities including third party audits to evaluate whether sufficient bonds exist • policy requires 100 per cent financial assurance for all minesites and a cost calculation tool is provided for consistency and high risk aspects • jurisdiction wide database accessible to the public • public consultation prior to policy changes • review report by government on disturbance and rehabilitation, with per formance based indicators to interpret data in public domain • regular review of per formance with policy to amend Resilient (5) In addition to complaint and proactive: • regular collaboration across jurisdictions on rehab/closure data and policy • benchmarking with jurisdictions overseas Table 2. Maturity measures for element 5 (Table 1) of the Jurisdictional Maturity Chart. References Government of Western Australian www.dmp. wa.gov.au/documents/Mine_Closure(2).pdf. ANZMEC/MCA, 2000. Strategic framework for mine closure. www.ret.gov.au/resources/Documents/ mcmpr/Strategic_Framework_for_Mine_Closure. pdf. Fraser Institute, 2009. Fraser Institute Annual Sur vey of Mining Companies 2008/2009. www. fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/product_files/ MiningSur vey20082009_Cdn.pdf. Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, 2007. Mining disturbance, State of the Environment Report, pp 119-23. www.ehp.qld.gov.au/register/ p02256aw.pdf. ICMM, 2008. Planning for integrated mine closure. www.icmm.com/page/9566/icmm-publishesclosure-toolkit. Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, 2011. Mining disturbance, State of the Environment Repor t, p 179. www.ehp.qld.gov.au/state-of-theenvironment/report-2011/index.html. Depar tment of Mines and Petroleum and Environmental Protection Authority (DMP/EPA), 2011. Guidelines for preparing Mine Closure Plans, 64 February 2013 View publication stats International Organisation for Standardisation ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems www. iso.org/iso/home.html. Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources/Minerals Council of Australia (MCMPR/ MCA), 2010. Strategic Framework for managing abandoned mines in the minerals industr y. Poulin R and Jacques M, 2009. Environmental Feature Sponsor bonding in mining – Comparative analysis of regulator y requirements, Enviromine 2009, conference paper, Laval University, Quebec. Rogerson M, 2007. Mine Rehabilitation, A Queensland Perspective, Environmental Protection Agency, ppt presentation – combination of two presentations by Dr Ian Wilson, Central Queensland Mining Forum. www.fba.org.au/news/downloads/ cqminingforum_michael-rodgerson.pdf. Unger C, Lechner A M, Glenn V, Edraki M and Mulligan D R, 2012. Mapping and Prioritising Rehabilitation of Abandoned Mines in Australia Lifeof-Mine Conference 2012. Wilson I, 2006. Legislating for quicker and better rehabilitation, in Fourie, A and Tibbett, M (Eds) Mine Closure 2006, pp 761-71. Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, WA. n