|
|
|
Sunday, October 10, 2010 |
|
De-silting catchment dams and vlei areas in the SA Mining Industry
:: News
|
 |
Source: Mike Smith
The environmental clean up objectives of most Mining Houses includes the “clean out” of catchment dams and associate downstream vlei areas. These areas are typically filled with silt derived from years of overflow from processing plant areas. After years of service, catchment dams have minimal storage capacity and as a consequence, the downstream vlei areas are often contaminated with fine silt residue. These areas are generally saturated and water logged thereby precluding the efficient use of mechanical equipment (loaders, backactors and trucks) to achieve the task at hand. Limited success has been achieved around the footprint perimeter where machines have reasonable underfoot working conditions. Attempts to clean areas beyond the perimeter generally fail due to access problems.
ECMP provides the Mining Industry with an alternative “hydraulic mining option”. The first step is to install the required infrastructure (i.e. high pressure water pipelines, slurry disposal pipeline, monitor guns, slurry pumpstations, etc.) followed by “the hydraulic mining exercise”.
“We have successfully completed several of these projects, achieving the Mine’s objectives in the specified contract period within the allowable budget” says Mike Smith, managing director of ECMP. “It is our intention to actively market this expertise throughout the S.A. Mining Industry where a strong demand for an effective environmental clean up
solutions exists”.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|