Reclamation

Where restoration of former mine lands is concerned, skeptics and optimists abound. But on one point, most agree: progress has been made – even as they debate the extent of those gains and where improvements have occurred.

“We’ve made great strides,” says Steve Richardson, reclamation director for the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research (FIPR).

“Over the years, (mining companies) have done a pretty good job returning the land to some productive use,” Richardson says. “But if we’re going to define restoration as putting it back exactly as it was – that’s almost impossible. The main thing is not putting it back exactly as it was but providing similar functions and uses.”

“The issue has always been planning in my book,” says Tim King, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) at Tenoroc. “It was originally done to meet a permit, and the focus was the mining unit, not the big system. But larger systems were being taken apart.”

That’s changing as a result of recent rule changes, King says. “It’s not just arbitrary planning units any more – it’s entire drainage basins. That’s a pretty significant step forward.”

The bottom line, says FWC biologist Jim Beever, is “to preserve the areas of highest ecological value and let them mine other, already impacted areas.”

“In the end, that takes an admission that mining is destructive of the landscape by its very nature,” he argues.

Charlotte County Commissioner Adam Cummings puts it this way: “Mining tears out the underground plumbing on which everything else depends. The damage can never truly be repaired.”

Restoring Hydrology

The impacts on surface and groundwater hydrology remain a central concern, particularly in restoring streams and bayhead wetlands. “We just don’t have all the information we need,” says Richardson.

Good stream restoration is complicated. “If the soils aren’t right, the hydrology’s not right, and the water quality’s not right,” says Tony Janicki of Janicki Environmental Services, one of the water quality experts testifying at the Ona mine hearings.

“One way of dealing with the disturbance,” says Richardson, “is to leave it alone and mine around it, but mining around it may disrupt the hydrology to an even greater extent.”

Filling the Void

Sand deficits pose another problem in reclamation, according to Rob Brown, senior administrator of Manatee County’s environmental management department. “After you remove the ore and the clay there’s a void – and you simply don’t have enough sand to fill the void so you end up with lakes,” he says.

In Manatee County, mining companies must ensure a net balance of sand – “meaning that if they’re mining 200 tons of sand tailings we have to have 200 tons of sand tailings back for restoration,” Brown explains. The alternative – selling the sand or transporting it to other sites — is unacceptable, he adds.

The county’s recently updated local mining and reclamation ordinances are the strictest in Florida, if not the nation, Brown says, reflecting a long-standing posture of holding mining companies accountable.

The Tough Stuff

Reclamation of clay settling ponds is particularly challenging. Their enormous footprint (roughly 40% of the mining site), coupled with pudding-like soils that require years to dry and even then are unstable, have made them unsuitable for many uses except pasture up to now.

And while research has shown that just about anything including citrus can be grown on the nutrient-rich clay soils, there has been little interest. “The biggest problem with ag is economics,” says Richardson. “A lot of farming is going overseas because it’s cheaper to import.” Working with clay also requires experience; the same soils that are highly effective at retaining water can make harvesting crops almost impossible in wetter months.

However, their high elevation and soil characteristics may make clay settling areas ideal headwaters in watersheds. The trick is figuring out how to optimize drainage out of the clay ponds, according to King, who’s confident it can be done.

Rarer habitats represent another challenge in reclamation. “We’re just not restoring a lot of rare habitat or having much success with things like seeps, seasonal wetlands with short hydroperiods and pine flatwoods with the type of plant species diversity you would expect to find,” says Beever. Recreating pine flatwoods, for example, requires more than simply planting pine trees, he explains. “A large part of what makes it useful is a diverse understory.”

Functionality is the key. What may look like scrub habitat may not function like scrub habitat, unless you get back the proper flora and fauna.

But where’s the incentive? Spending huge sums of money to fully restore lands slated for future development makes little sense, some argue. “Why not make the voiding of mineral rights and permanent preservation of unmined lands of high ecological value the mitigation for mining impacts,” says Beever, instead of spending money to restore lands of lesser value that will be redisturbed in the future.

Further complicating evaluation of reclaimed lands is the fact that they’re still young. “I’m not so sure the tough stuff is reclamation,” says King. “It’s nurturing these communities to maturity.”

But with minimal state performance measures for release of reclaimed lands and without any post-release site assessment, that task becomes difficult.

Drawing a Line in the Sand

In the end, generalizations on such a complex topic are woefully inadequate. You have to look at each locale, says Richardson. “What we want to do is provide as many facts as we can so we’re not all using our imagination or best guesses to make decisions.”

Located downstream of mining’s next and possibly final frontier, Charlotte County thinks it’s time to be more explicit. Says Cummings: “We must determine what is an acceptable impact and draw a line in the sand, telling the industry where mining will stop.”