Groundwater management in the proximity of a mine site: cobre las cruces (spain)
- Autores: Laura Scheiber Pagès
- Directores de la Tesis: Enrique Vázquez Suñé (dir. tes.), Carlos Ayora Ibáñez (dir. tes.), Xavier Sánchez Vila (tut. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2017
- Idioma: español
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The natural environment in which we live is being degraded by human activity, and water is a primary victim of these impacts. Increasingly, governments around the world are putting greater pressure on industries that use large amounts of water, especially for mining activities, to implement more sustainable methods. A new mining model seeks to achieve a balance among good environmental practices, cost reduction and mining productivity.
The Niebla-Posadas aquifer (NP) constitutes one of the water resources within the Guadalquivir Basin, which supports traditional agriculture in the area and is the source of drinking water for many populations. In recent years, competition for this resource has increased due to the expansion of irrigated agriculture and the development of mining activity in the area with the opening of the Cobre Las Cruces mine (CLC). The CLC is one of Europe's largest open pit copper mine which has implemented pioneering water management methodologies in the mining industry. One of the highlights of this methodology is the Drainage and Reinjection system (DRS) for groundwater near the mining activity. The DRS allows extraction of groundwater and drainage of the open pit through a set of wells surrounding it. Moreover, once treated to meet environmental requirements, this water is reinjected into the aquifer through another set of wells surrounding the extraction wells. In addition, groundwater in the vicinity of the CLC presents unusual hydrochemical characteristics, conditioning its possible uses. High concentrations of some contaminants have attracted public interest, and numerous environmental groups have drawn attention to the major anthropogenic activities in the zone, especially the mining exploitation of Cobre Las Cruces (CLC).
The general goal of this thesis is to provide a methodological framework for the management of groundwater in a mining environment. Development of a methodological framework is of great interest and may constitute a support tool for sustainable management and protection of groundwater resources affected by mining activities.
This methodological framework includes hydrogeochemistry, isotopic and statistics studies related to groundwater and water-rock interaction and flow and reactive transport modelling.
All these methodological issues are focused on and applied to the CLC, which has allowed validation of joint use to ascertain and quantify the hydrodynamic aspects of the groundwater at mine sites and definition of the bases for sustainable water resource management in the area.
