In the final episode of the third season of Getting Closure, host Mike O’Kane explores some of the less conventional options for putting a worked-out mine to good use. His guest is Peter Whitbread-Abrutat, co-author of 102 Things to Do With a Hole in the Ground and a leading proponent of progressive and sustainable mine closure.

Illustrating his argument with examples from around the world, Peter makes the point that the solution to any mine-closure problem is probably already out there, somewhere — you just have to know where to look. Since 2014, Peter has been the director of Future Terrains, a team of reclamation specialists and landscape architects tasked with reclaiming degraded lands by enhancing environmental and social performance and promoting landscape restoration.

Peter and Mike also talk about the lessons from the Eden Project, which, with Peter’s scientific guidance, turned what used to be a kaolin clay pit into the world’s largest indoor rainforest.

Resources

• Landform Design Institute
• Future Terrains
• The Eden Project
• 102 Things to Do With a Hole in the Ground

Much of the work involved in mine closure and reclamation might seem to be invested in handling earth, water, and waste. But as guest Christine Daly tells host Mike O’Kane, reclamation is also about bridging the divide between engineering and biology and recognizing that successful mine closure can include “bringing something to life again.”

At least half of the LDI’s 12 principles of landform design specifically reinforce Christine’s dedication to restoring wildlife and vibrant natural lands, a passion that she buttresses with a commitment to the emerging development of co-reclamation or working cooperatively with Indigenous Peoples and local communities in achieving post-mining objectives.

Fittingly, Christine began her career in environmental sciences, which followed a childhood experiencing great wonder with the natural world. Mike and Christine also discuss elements of the Institute’s newly released guidance document on creating a design basis memorandum, a critical component of ensuring landform design and mine closure and reclamation follow a preconceived vision agreed upon by all stakeholders with an interest in the welfare of the land.

For further reading:

LDI DBM page: https://landformdesign.com/DBM

Christine Daly’s PhD thesis: https://prism.ucalgary.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/ea8d9293-6e30-4021-aa27-189450a7f5d5/content

For those listeners well versed in the mandate of the LDI, many of the ideas expressed in the latest episode of Getting Closure will sound familiar. Guest Guy Boggs is the chief executive officer of the Cooperative Research Centre for Transformations in Mining Economies (CRC TIME) in Perth, Australia, an organization that — like the LDI — is dedicated to examining and helping transform what happens economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally after mining ends. Ideally, all for the better. In essence, Boggs’ centre is about “changing the way we think about the closure process.” It's more evidence of just how much the industry is evolving in sync with the LDI’s mission of making landform design routine in mining worldwide.

Among the CRC TIME’s core discoveries in its research on responsible closure planning is the need to identify a champion. As Boggs tells host Mike O’Kane, sometimes that champion can come from unexpected places, like a group of Italian scientists looking for a place to house an underground dark matter research laboratory.

Resources

• Landform Design Institute
• CRC TIME
• Stawell Dark Matter lab