What is Mine Closure

Mine closure is the period of time when the ore-

extracting activities of a mine have ceased, and final
decommissioning and mine reclamation are being
completed. It is generally associated with reduced
employment levels, which can have a significant
negative impact on local economies. It is also the
period when the majority of mine reclamation is
completed, making the land safe and useful again.
• Closure planning, a relative newcomer to mine
planning, continues throughout the life of a mine,
starting with conceptual closure plans prior to
production, periodic updates throughout the life of
the mine, and a final decommissioning plan. This is
captured more coherently in the Australian Model
to mine closure.
• At most mines, progressive reclamation over the
life of the mine is used to reduce the reclamation
burden at closure.
• Mine closure involves the completion of mineral
extraction, processing and transportation
activities and the removal of the site facilities
and infrastructure which supported these
activities. No additional approvals are required at
this stage, however, a completion report must be
submitted to the ministry which documents how
the mine site closure has complied with the
requirements of the closure plan.
 What is Closure Plan
• Closure plan - A document that provides guidance to a mining
company and other relevant stakeholders, establishes closure
objectives and describes the actions to be taken to achieve them.
• All land affected by development activity must be rehabilitated
after the activity has finished. A closure plan outlines how the
affected land will be rehabilitated and the costs associated with
doing so. A closure plan must be developed and acknowledged by
the ministry before mine development can begin.
• Closure plans must be certified by company executives to ensure
that they cover all of the conditions described in the
Mine Rehabilitation Code and that all outlined rehabilitation tasks
meet necessary technical requirements.
 What is Reclamation
• A generic term that refers to management
techniques designed to make a degraded area
fit for new activities; reclamation is a broad
concept that encompasses different objectives
or levels of reclamation to be achieved,
including rehabilitation, ecological restoration
and remediation of contaminated areas.
 Cause of Mine closure
(i) Declining prices of mineral commodities.
(ii) Market restrictions for certain minerals due to health reasons (such as asbestos),
competition with other materials or technological changes that lead to obsolescence of
industrial processes that consume certain minerals.
(iii) Operating accidents or incidents, such as failure of tailings dams or slopes, or collapse
of underground excavations.
(iv) Business decisions arising from the sale of assets, mergers or acquisitions, or a change
in shareholder structure.
(v) Extreme external events resulting from geological and atmospheric processes or climate
change.
(vi) Changes in government policies, such as tax increases, changes in environmental
legislation, administrative decisions spurred by community pressure or court decisions.
(vii) Poor geological knowledge of the ore body.
(viii) Design errors that result in operational hurdles or increased costs.
(ix) Fraud or other illegal business practices.
(x) Costs for the contingency
Principles and approaches should be considered
when preparing a Mine Closure Plan

• Ecologically sustainability
• Integrate life of mine planning, and should start as early as possible and continue
through to final closure and relinquishment
• Mine Closure Plans must be site-specific
• Risk-based, taking into account results of materials characterization, data on the local
environmental and climatic conditions, and consideration of potential impacts through
contaminant pathways
• Stakeholders consultations
• Post –Mining land uses
• Materials characterisation
• Based on adaptive management - experience from other mine sites and research, and
how lessons learned from these are to be applied
• Demonstrate that appropriate systems for closure performance monitoring and
maintenance and for record keeping and management are in place
 Closure issues

• Hazardous materials;
• Hazardous and unsafe facilities;
• Contaminated sites;
• Acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD);
• Radioactive materials;
• Fibrous (including asbestiform) materials;
• Non-target metals and target metal residues in mine wastes;
• Management of mine pit lakes;
• Adverse impacts on surface and groundwater quality;
• Dispersive and sodic materials;
 Closure Issues

• Erosive materials;
• Design and maintenance of surface water management structures;
• Dust emissions;
• Flora and fauna diversity/threatened species;
• Challenges associated with rehabilitation and revegetation
• Visual amenity;
• Heritage issues;
• Alteration of the direction of groundwater flow;
• Alteration of the depth to water table of the local superficial aquifer;
and
• Alteration of the hydrology and flow of surface waters.
 What is rehabilitation?
Rehabilitation comprises the design and construction of landforms as
well as the establishment of sustainable ecosystems or alternative
vegetation, depending upon desired post-operational land use. Or other
words to restore the landscape to conditions similar to the surrounding
(non-mined) environment, including physical, biological and chemical
processes

Mine site rehabilitation should be designed to meet three key objectives:

1. the long-term stability and sustainability of the landforms, soils and
hydrology of the site
2. the partial or full repair of ecosystem capacity to provide habitats
for biota and services for people (WA EPA 2006)
3. . the prevention of pollution of the surrounding environment.
Rehabilitation in the context of sustainable development

• Mining is a temporary land use (although some

mines can have very long lives), and each
operation is expected to close at some point in
the future. The closure of the operation generally
occurs when the resource is depleted or when
the cost of production exceeds returns. Closure
therefore provides opportunities for land
disturbed by mining to be rehabilitated to one or
more sustainable post-mining land uses (DEHP
2014).
The Business case of Rehabilitation
• Progressive rehabilitation
• Compliance Risk
• Financial liability
• Reputational risk
• Rehabilitation and ecosystem services
 Progressive rehabilitation

• Failure to start rehabilitation early in the life of the operation (or in the
later stages of project development) may create an obstacle to building
the knowledge and capacity necessary to deliver a sustainable outcome
that meets agreed success criteria. At worst, initiating closure operations
when the site has not developed the skills, equipment and necessary
technical knowledge to successfully carry out a large rehabilitation
program can result in very poor outcomes requiring very costly
remediation, and with greatly reduced probability of successful closure.
• Successful rehabilitation requires a continuous improvement focus, based
on site-specific knowledge, research and monitoring. Opportunities and
threats should be identified early so that mining operations do not
reduce rehabilitation options. Thus, delayed investment leads to delayed
relinquishment beyond the operational life of a mine, adding to cost and,
in some cases, the retention of a liability for years longer than necessary.
 Compliance risk

• A failure to meet regulatory expectations

could attract increased scrutiny, leading to
additional restrictions on companies, higher
compliance costs and possibly legal costs. In a
worst-case scenario, it could lead to the loss of
the company’s social licence to operate and
limit its future access to resources
 Financial liability
• Rehabilitation is a critical part of mine closure
planning, and effective and early planning helps to
minimise rehabilitation costs. Progressive
rehabilitation can also provide an early indication
as to whether site closure objectives are realistic
and achievable. From a legislative perspective,
state governments are increasingly reinforcing the
critical linkage between rehabilitation and closure
through requirements for sites to develop life-of-
mine or mining operations plans (DTIRIS 2013).1
 Reputational risk
• A record of poor rehabilitation can lead to
reputational damage among regulators and
external stakeholders. This may manifest itself in
project approval delays, more stringent permit
conditions or even the loss of the company’s social
licence to operate. In contrast, a proven track
record of quality rehabilitation outcomes has the
potential to be a point of differentiation and define
the company as a development partner of choice
for regulators and local communities.
 Rehabilitation and ecosystem services
The Society for Ecological Restoration recommends the use of nine
ecosystem attributes for measuring restoration (rehabilitation in the
mining context) success (SER 2004):
1. similar ecosystem diversity and community structure to those of reference
sites
2. the presence of indigenous species
3. the presence of functional groups necessary for long-term stability
4. the capacity of the physical environment to sustain reproducing populations
5. normal functioning
6. integration within the landscape
7. the elimination of potential threats
8. resilience to natural disturbances
9. self-sustainability.
 Rehabilitation Note:
• It is important to remember that continual improvement in
rehabilitation techniques will occur over time and
proponents should actively include this in their mine closure
planning.
• Effective, early planning will minimise rehabilitation costs.
Taking a more integrated and progressive approach to mine
rehabilitation can achieve effective mine rehabilitation and
aid in meeting closure outcomes (DITR, 2006). DMP and the
EPA encourage proponents to progressively rehabilitate,
where possible, recognising that some forms of mining, e.g.
strip mining (minerals sands) may make progressive
rehabilitation more feasible.
 STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF A MINE
CLOSURE PLAN Document
EPA require the Mine Closure Plan to be structured in the following format to ensure consistency
across the industry and efficient assessments:
1. Cover Page
2. Checklist with corporate endorsement
3. Table of Contents including a List of Figures, Tables and Maps
4. Scope and Purpose
5. Project Overview
6. Identification of Closure Obligations and Commitments
7. Stakeholder Engagement
8. Post-Mining Land Use and Closure Objectives
9. Development of Completion Criteria
10. Collection and Analysis of Closure Data
11. Identification and Management of Closure Issues
12. Closure Implementation
13. Closure Monitoring and Maintenance
14. Financial Provision for Closure
15. Management of Information and Data