Treatment of Acid Rock Drainage in a Meromictic Mine Pit Lake
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 132, Issue 4
Abstract
The Island Copper Mine pit near Port Hardy, Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada, was flooded in 1996 with seawater and capped with fresh water to form a meromictic (permanently stratified) pit lake of maximum depth 350 m and surface area . The pit lake is being developed as a treatment system for acid rock drainage. The physical structure and water quality has developed into three distinct layers: a brackish and well-mixed upper layer; a plume stirred intermediate layer; and a thermally convecting lower layer. Concentrations of dissolved metals have been maintained well below permit limits by fertilization of the surface waters. The initial mine closure plan proposed removal of heavy metals by metal–sulfide precipitation via anaerobic sulfate-reducing bacteria, once anoxic conditions were established in the intermediate and lower layers. Anoxia has been achieved in the lower layer, but oxygen consumption rates have been less than initially predicted, and anoxia has yet to be achieved in the intermediate layer. If anoxia can be permanently established in the intermediate layer then biogeochemical removal rates may be high enough that fertilization may no longer be necessary.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank BHP Billiton, especially Chris Hanks and Brian Welchman, for financial and logistic support, and access to water quality data contained in their Annual Environmental Assessment reports for 1998–2000. They also wish to acknowledge the field assistance from Steve Lacasse and Andy Hanke of BCL Biotechnologies Ltd., and the technical work of Clem Pelletier, George Poling, Deborah Muggli, Marc Wen, Shane Uren, and others at Rescan Environmental Services Ltd. Thanks are extended to Roger Pieters and Steven Pond of University of British Columbia for their technical and instrumentation assistance and to Mike Wilton for his initial research. The contributions from three anonymous reviewers added greatly to the purpose and clarity of the paper.
References
Aspinall, C. (1995). The story of island copper, BHP Minerals Canada, Vancouver, Canada.
Baines, W. D., and Turner, J. S. (1969). “Turbulent buoyant convection from a source in a confined region.” J. Fluid Mech., 37, 51–80.
BHP Minerals Canada Ltd. (1996). “Island Copper Mine closure plan.” Rep. Prepared for Vancouver Island Mine Development Review Committee, Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, Victoria B.C., Canada.
Böhrer, B., Heidenreich, H., Schimmele, M., and Schultze, M. (1998). “Numerical prognosis for salinity profiles of future lakes in the opencast mine Merseburg-Ost.” Int. J. Salt Lake Research, 7, 235–260.
Colomer, J., Serra, T., Piera, J., Roget, E., and Casamitjana, X. (2001). “Observations of a hydrothermal plume in a karstic lake.” Limnol. Oceanogr., 46, 197–203.
Dagenais, P. J. (1996). “An investigation into the construction, excavation and geochemical history of a waste rock dump and implications for long-term water quality at the Island Copper Mine, Port Hardy, British Columbia. MASc thesis, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Ellis, D. V., Pedersen, T. F., Poling, G. W., Pelletier, C., and Horne, I. (1995). “Review of 23 years of STD: Island Copper Mine, Canada.” Marine Georesources Geotech., 13, 59–99.
Fischer, H. B., List, E. J., Koh, R. C. Y., Imberger, J., and Brooks, N. H. (1979). Mixing in inland and coastal water, Academic, New York.
Fisher, T. S. R. (2002). “Limnology of the meromictic Island Copper pit lake.” Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Geller, W., Klapper, H., and Salomons, W. (1998). Acidic mining lakes—Acid mine drainage, limnology and reclamation, Springer, Berlin.
Hamblin, P. F., Stevens, C. L., and Lawrence, G. A. (1999). “Simulation of vertical transport in mining pit lake.” J. Hydraul. Eng., 125(10), 1029–1038.
Hyndman, R. D. (1976). “Heat flow measurements in the inlets of southwestern British Columbia.” J. Geophys. Res., 81, 337–349.
Jellison, R., Romero, J., and Melack, J. M. (1998). “The onset of meromixis during restoration of Mono lake, California: Unintended consequences of reducing water diversions.” Limnol. Oceanogr., 43, 706–711.
Kling, G. W. (1988). “Comparative transparency, depth of mixing, and stability of stratification in lakes of Cameroon, West Africa.” Limnol. Oceanogr., 33(1), 27–40.
Kumagai, M. (1984). “Turbulent buoyant convection from a source in a confined two-layer region.” J. Fluid Mech., 147, 105–131.
Melack, J. M. (1978). “Morphometric, physical and chemical features of the volcanic crater lakes of western Uganda.” Arch. Hydrobiologica, 84, 430–453.
Millero, F. J. (2000). “The equation of state of lakes.” Aquat. Geochem., 6, 1–17.
Millero, F. J., and Sohn, M. L. (1992). Chemical oceanography, CRC, Boca Raton, Fla.
Monismith, S. G. 1985. “Wind-forced motions in stratified lakes and their effect on mixed layer shear.” Limnol. Oceanogr., 30(4), 771–783.
Muggli, D. L., Pelletier, C. A., Poling, G. W., and Schwamberger, E. C. (2000). “Injected ARD plume behaviour in a pit lake utilizing in situ dye studies.” Proc., 5th Int. Conf. on Acid Rock Drainage, Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Denver, 305–318.
Northcote, T. G., and Hall, K. J. (1983). “Limnological contrasts and anomalies in two adjacent saline lakes.” Hydrobiologia, 105, 179–194.
Ozretich R. J. (1975). “Mechanism for deep water renewal in Lake Nitinat, a permanently anoxic fjord.” Estuarine Coastal Marine Science, 3, 189–200.
Perkin, R. G., and Lewis, E. L. (1980). “The practical salinity scale 1978, fitting the data.” IEEE J. Oceanic Eng., 5, 9–16.
Perry, K. A., and Pedersen, T. F. (1993). “Sulphur speciation and pyrite formulation in meromictic ex-fjords.” Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 57, 4405–4418.
Poling, G. W., Ellis, D. V., Murray, J. W., Parsons, T. R., and Pelletier, C. A. (2002). Underwater tailing placement at Island Copper Mine, Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc., Littleton, Colo.
Poling, G. W., Pelletier, C. A., Muggli, D., Wen, W., Gerits, J., Hanks, C., and Black, K. (2003). “Field studies of semi-passive biogeochemical treatment of acid rock drainage at the Island Copper Mine pit lake.” Proc., 6th Int. Conf. on Acid Rock Drainage, Cairns, Australia, 549–558.
Sanderson, B., Perry, K., and Pedersen, T. (1986). “Vertical diffusion in meromictic Powell Lake, British Columbia.” J. Geophys. Res., 91, 7647–7655.
Schladow, S. G., and Fisher, I. H. (1995). “The physical response of temperate lakes to artificial destratification.” Limnol. Oceanogr., 40, 359–373.
Stevens, C. L., and Lawrence, G. A. (1998). “Stability and meromixis in a water filled mine pit.” Limnol. Oceanogr., 43, 946–954.
Stull, R. A. (2000). Meteorology for scientists and engineers, 2nd Ed., Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove, Calif.
Turner, J. S. (1973). Buoyancy effects in fluids, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
UNESCO. (1981). “Tenth report of the joint panel on oceanographic tables and standards.” Proc., UNESCO Technical Papers in Marine Science, Vol. 36, Sidney, B.C., Canada.
Ward, P. R. B., Hall, K. J., Northcote, T. G., Cheung, W., and Murphy, T. (1990). “Autumnal mixing in Mahoney Lake, British Columbia.” Hydrobiologia, 197, 129–138.
Watkins, T. H. (2000). “Hard rock legacy.” National Geographic Magazine, March.
Wilkinson, D. L. (1984). “Purging of saline wedges from ocean outfalls.” J. Hydraul. Eng., 110, 1815–1829.
Wood, I. R., Bell, R. G., and Wilkinson, D. L. (1993). Ocean disposal of wastewater, World Scientific, Singapore.
Wüest, A., Brooks, N. H., and Imboden, D. M. (1992). “Bubble plume modeling for lake restoration.” Water Resour. Res., 28, 3235–3250.
Wüest, A., Pieke, G., and Halfman, J. D. (1996). “Combined effect of dissolved solids and temperature on the density stratification of Lake Malawi.” Paleoclimatology of the East African lakes, Gordon and Breach, Toronto.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 132 • Issue 4 • April 2006
Pages: 515 - 526
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Sep 3, 2002
Accepted: Apr 12, 2005
Published online: Apr 1, 2006
Published in print: Apr 2006
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.