Dr. Dirk Van Zyl, Director of the Mining Life-Cycle Center and Professor and Chair of Mining Engineering at the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno has been chosen to receive the prestigious Dr. Adrian Smith International Environmental Mining Award. The award will be presented at the Industry Outlook Luncheon on Thursday, December 7, 2006 during the Northwest Mining Association’s (NWMA) 112th Annual Meeting.
The award was created by TIMES Limited Managing Director Dr. Terry Mudder in conjunction with the Mining Journal and SRK Consulting, a firm in which Dr. Smith was a partner. The award will be presented by Mudder, along with Dr. Karen Hagelstein of TIMES. The award is for life- time achievement in the advancement of environmental stewardship and sustainability within the global mining industry. Van Zyl has been a pioneer in educating not only the public but consultants, government agencies, NGOs, mining personnel, and students.
The award honours Smith’s incredible career and the lifetime achievement of professionals dedicated to the development and application of the principles of environmental stewardship in the mining industry worldwide. Smith pioneered innovative solutions and approaches on many mining projects throughout the world. The award, created in 1996, has only been awarded on three previous occasions.
Dirk Van Zyl is the fourth recipient of the award. He has 30 years experience in research, teaching and consulting in tailings and mine waste disposal and heap leach design. He is one of the leading advocates on mining and sustainable development. Dirk was a key player in the Global Mining Initiative and the MMSD project that helped define and clarify the role of the mining industry in contributing to sustainable development in various settings on a global basis.
He has more than 70 publications to his credit and has created and directed numerous short courses on heap leach design, mining environmental management and mine closure in the USA and abroad. He was responsible for organizing the first conference on the use of cyanide in the mining industry in the middle 1980s.
The three previous recipients of the award were James Scott of Environmental Canada, Fred Fox, Director of Health, Safety and Environmental Quality for Kennecott Minerals, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto (that award presented by IM’s John Chadwick) and Gavin Murray of Sydney, Australia, formerly the Director of Environmental and Social Development at the International Finance Corp and Vice President of Sustainability for Placer Dome, Inc.