Mine land rehabilitation is an industry wide challenge that is going to become increasingly more difficult as the demand for minerals increases dramatically, grades decline and extraction becomes more complex.

Put simply this means more mining, not less. And, the footprint mining leaves behind must notably improve if we are to restore community trust and restore industry support for mining.

In their paper, "A Brief History of Mine Rehabilitation in Queensland", the Office of the Queensland Mine Rehabilitation Commissioner [QMRC] describes several decades of well intentioned regulatory effort intent on improving the residual land outcomes from the impacts of mining disturbance. 

The QMRC authors make it clear that Queensland has been focused on implementing regulatory obligations to adjust the mindset of industry to a proactive approach to mine closure.

It is quite fair that the state, and therefore its people, should not be burdened with the enduring financial liability for cleanup of disclaimed and abandoned mining land. Hence, the Financial Provisioning Fund is created, with some good , and not good, consequences.

Unfortunately regulation can be a blunt axe approach that encourages the legal fraternity to find loopholes (for some) to skirt what should be a commitment for a more valuable post mining social and environmental impact.

QMRC lays an essential platform

The QMRC looks to achieve best practice in mined land rehabilitation, by raising the awareness, promoting research, providing advice, and monitoring performance.

The 'brief history' shows that what we have now, is stage in policy development, not a destination. How we see solutions will change.

To date "remediation" has been the fall-back outcome, where the mining industry seeks to find 'least net cost' based solutions to meet its obligations.

enviroMETS (Qld) looks to 'net best value'

enviroMETS was incorporated on the realisation that these are complex industry wide issues that will only be solved with an innovation ecosystem working collaboratively to increase the value of mining impacted land for its future custodians.

Our support for the QMRC's goals will arise via our Lighthouse Projects, where we intend to look at a number of representative mine sites, (abandoned, legacy, C&M, and closure) through technical, economic, social and environmental lens.

We'd expect to find some innovative and sustainable new ways of recommercialising, repurposing and remediating land. Though multi-discipline collaboration we seek outcomes that deliver 'net best value'.

These will be solutions that could well involve forms of private-public partnerships, adaption of technologies from outside mining and seeing value in the mined landform for another purpose.

An opportunity for Queensland to lead

Pursuit of 'net best' solution means collectively valuing three impacts; the resource extraction, the social community development, and the environmental improvement.

Almost certainly regulatory frameworks will change, as will community expectations. enviroMETS sees the disconnect between the way mining and post-mine worlds interface and opportunities for economic re-purposing of assets and value generation to our economy.

One expects that there is more history to come in terms of Queensland's regulatory framework as the industry works to create the net best outcomes and fulfils the demand for resources.

What we achieve together may lead the world.

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Ref: A Brief History of Mine Rehabilitation Reforms in Queensland. (2022 39 EPLJ 64. is published by Thomson Reuters (Professional) Australia