Seeing mines as blank canvases

Mines can mean copper, and gold, and oil and potash. They can also mean slag piles and tailings ponds and fears of environmental hazard. But to Neeltje Slingerland, mines mean a wealth of opportunity for landscape design. The Landscape Architect is getting her PhD in geo-environmental engineering, so she can help mining companies plan for the far future: and make sure mines are set up so that they can one day become something better in the future, like a park, or a lake, or grazing land. 

The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length. 

What's wrong with the way mines are designed now? 

Right now mines are designed with a closure plan created up front, however what I'm proposing is that we create a closure plan that's much more detailed at an earlier point in time. If we had the plans earlier, then chances are the design process and the creation of the mine would follow a more streamlined path and we'd be left with a better end result. Typically there is not a very large emphasis on aesthetics, but on stability, strength of materials, and the safety of the public and environment. I'd like to bring an approach that's guided by nature and a more holistic approach. You see a lot of historic minescapes have been left or abandoned, that's changed in the last twenty years, but I think we can do better. I think we can do the best job possible to get closer to a semblance of nature. 

When I tend to think in these terms I think, ok, if a mine is situated in an area that used to be Boreal forest, then when the mine leaves it should be turned back into Boreal forest. 

Right. And that's what has dominated the thinking for oilsands, up until recently. The problem with that kind of thinking is that we all know that climate change is a reality, that temperatures are increasing, that precipitation patterns are changing, and so, generally, all of our ecosystems are making slight shifts over time. Now the oilsands mines have very long lifespans, they can be operated for fifty to a hundred years, so the chances of that exact same ecosystem being productive and viable over that timeframe will change, obviously. So this is where climate change projections come into play in your design strategy. 

So what the mine replaced, may not have even been there in nature a hundred years down the road?

That's correct. 

Can you share any examples of the kind of re-purposing that you're talking about? 

There's a really good example of a mine in New Zealand, it's called the Martha Mine, and this mine used this exact process that has been spoken about in recent years and that we would like to implement in Alberta, and elsewhere. What they did was have a variety of inventories done, they had extensive hydro-geological studies done, and really tested their theories before this mine re-opened. So before they even broke ground, the mine re-opened in the 1980s, they had a plan for what was going to encompass the site when they closed. They had agricultural practices, they had grazing land, they have got two water bodies, and it's actually a draw for tourists as well. It might not work for every mine site, but it worked for them. 

We tend to think of resource extraction companies as being primarily concerned with the bottom line - do they worry about how their mine will look after they have closed? 

Yes, the bottom dollar is in play, but that's the beauty of this process. If you plan rigorously up front, you can not only have a beautiful landscape that could be income-generating, or create more natural space, or conservation areas, but because you're working towards an end goal throughout your mining process, it actually is more efficient. So, there's one mine in Northern Africa that tried this, they started planning for closure and actively working towards that plan about eight years before the mine was scheduled to close, and they saw a dramatic reduction in their costs for reclamation, about 60% reduction. So when you think of reclamation, as costing anywhere between — in the oilsands, $200, 000 to about $1.8 million dollars per hectare depending on the materials — these are huge cost-savings that can be realized, given up front planning is ongoing.