A procedure to evaluate environmental rehabilitation in limestone quarries

Autor(es)

Neri, Ana Claudia ^[1] ; Sanchez, Luis Enrique ^[1]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Sao Paulo, Escola Politecn, BR-05508900 Sao Paulo - Brazil

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: Journal of Environmental Management; v. 91, n. 11, p. 2225-2237, NOV 2010.
• Citações Web of Science: 25

Resumo

A procedure to evaluate mine rehabilitation practices during the operational phase was developed and validated. It is based on a comparison of actually observed or documented practices with internationally recommended best practices (BP). A set of 150 BP statements was derived from international guides in order to establish the benchmark. The statements are arranged in six rehabilitation programs under three categories: (1) planning (2) operational and (3) management, corresponding to the adoption of the plan-do-check-act management systems model to mine rehabilitation. The procedure consists of (i) performing technical inspections guided by a series of field forms containing BP statements; (ii) classifying evidences in five categories; and (iii) calculating conformity indexes and levels. For testing and calibration purposes, the procedure was applied to nine limestone quarries and conformity indexes were calculated for the rehabilitation programs in each quarry. Most quarries featured poor planning practices, operational practices reached high conformity levels in 50% of the cases and management practices scored moderate conformity. Despite all quarries being ISO 14001 certified, their management systems pay low attention to issues pertaining to land rehabilitation and biodiversity. The best results were achieved by a quarry whose expansion was recently submitted to the environmental impact assessment process, suggesting that public scrutiny may play a positive role in enhancing rehabilitation practices. Conformity indexes and levels can be used to chart the evolution of rehabilitation practices at regular intervals, to establish corporate goals and for communication with stakeholders. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 05/58089-0 - Avaliação da eficácia da medida de recuperação ambiental na mineração de calcário para cimento
• Beneficiário: Luis Enrique Sánchez
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Regular