The Canada Mining Innovation Council (CMIC) has released two project prefeasibility reports by the Closure Working Group (CWG) and the Water Working Group (WWG) of its Environmental Stewardship Initiative (ESI). The completion of the pre-feasibility studies represents a major milestone for the ESI’s work following the completion of an environmental management scoping study (prepared by Hatch), several multi-stakeholder surveys, and ongoing ESI workshops. The objectives of the studies are to assess the initial feasibility of the following project concepts:
Closure Working Group
- Standardised closure criteria for mine site relinquishment to the Crown
- Passive systems for managing acid rock drainage (ARD)
Water Working Group
- National database / repository of water resources information
- Remote, real-time sensors for water quality monitoring
The closure and water working groups held workshops in May 2014 to finalise the results of the studies and to select projects for further project development. Based on the results of the workshops, the CWG decided to conduct feasibility studies on projects 1 and 3, above, from June – December 2014. A similar study will also take place for project 4, beginning in September 2014. Lastly, for project 2, the ESI plans to work in conjunction with a graduate student to answer some outstanding issues that were raised during the course of the prefeasibility study.