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

In the fall of 2019, as the Landform Design Institute was starting up in Vancouver, Canada, Priscilla Nelson was organizing a likeminded organization in the United States. Launched in early 2020, The Tailings Center is an industry/university research and education collaboration between the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, and the University of Arizona. The Center focuses on education, research, and outreach devoted to tailings and mine waste. 

Host Mike O’Kane talks with Nelson — a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and one of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ “Geo-Legends” — about the state of female involvement in the engineering profession and the importance of being able to “pivot” throughout one’s career in pursuit of the many possible directions your ambitions might lead you. They also talk about the need to set “reasonable expectations” in the mining industry, why communicating clarity and creating trust are essential to successful mine closure, and the challenges of convincing the industry to recognize the value not only of immediate financial priorities but also the social and environmental considerations inherent to the industry’s work.

Resources

Landform Design Institute

The Tailings Center

Host Mike O’Kane explores principles 9, 10, 11, and 12 with Institute Founder Gord McKenna, concluding the three-episode discussion of all 12 landform design principles. 

The pair explain why it’s important to follow every drop of water through the landscape (Principle 9), reclaim a mine progressively (Principle 10), plan for sustainable closure (Principle 11), and share the lessons of both failure and success (Principle 12). 

In emphasizing the importance of providing the best possible landform design advice to practitioners, Mike conjures one of the most famous quotes by Oscar Wilde: “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.” The implication of the phrase is that wisdom finds its true value when shared with others, a practice Mike observes is a key objective in speaking with the learned guests who come on the “Getting Closure” podcast.

Host Mike O’Kane once again welcomes LDI founder and chair, Gord McKenna to the show. O’Kane, co-chair of the Institute’s technical advisors, discusses with McKenna four principles that put the “nitty-gritty” of landform design into practice. 

These four principles cover: working at spatial and temporal scales simultaneously (Principle 5); building and reclaiming landforms and landscapes using existing technologies (Principle 6); using a risk-based approach that involves designing for the most likely case while embracing the observational method and adaptive management (Principle 7); and knowing your materials, including their properties, quantities, and locations (Principles 8).

More info:

The 12 Principles of Landform Design

In the first episode of Season 3 of Getting Closure,” host Mike O’Kane sits down with LDI founder and chair, Gord McKenna, to characterize the first four principles of landform design.

O’Kane and McKenna describe what it means to “keep the land in mind” and how to create a vision for reclaimed land, which depends heavily on establishing trust between the mine, shareholders, and Indigenous peoples. They discuss next how to establish “governance” and assembling a multi-disciplinary team with a lead designer.

The conversation turns next to the development of the Design Basis Memorandum, guidance for which the LDI will be releasing this fall. A DBM sets out the vision for a particular project, large or small, and develops the goals, objectives, and design criteria to achieve that vision. Last, they talk about working collaboratively and embracing co-reclamation. Landscapes must be built with users, not for them.

In a preview of Season 3 of Getting Closure, host Mike O’Kane, Co-Chair of the LDI's Technical Advisors and a member of the Board, sits down with LDI Founder and Chair Gord McKenna to discuss why the 12 principles of landform design are so important.

The first episode of the new season will appear the week of August 19. The conversation will focus on the first 4 of the 12 principles.

We all know how gravity works … inherently, we know which way is up. We are also all well versed in our world’s push for renewable energy — so-called green energy. And there is growing discssion in our industry on its capacity to achieve our closure objectives and transform our mined land into a future, or post mining land use, which brings value to rightsholders, stakeholders, and the communities in and around our mine sites.

Our guest for this episode ties these three aspects together. Mark Swinnerton of Green Gravity discuss his insights on alternative land use potential for closed and legacy mines, but also planning for and creating renewable energy throughout the mine life cycle as part of closure planning. Mark’s perspective in this space is wide and varied as a result of the breadth of his incredible experience working in the mining industry for a large mining house, and really understanding how we influence investment in our industry and advance projects.

Lois Boxill is a member of the LDI's Board of Directors for good reason, not the least of which is a unique perspective on how to approach a wide variety of subjects involving mine closure — and her ability to apply ideas and experiences from further afield to the tasks involved in landform design.