As mining and extraction processes improve and lower grade ores
become economic, mining for most ores have extended to depths
beneath the zone of weathering oxidation created over geological
history. These deeper openings expose sulphidic formations and
reduced mineral species as either primary ore or simply as
accessory or gangue minerals in the country rock. This is not new, underground mining for primary base metal
and gold have long been familiar with these problems, as have
coal and uranium miners. The change is simply that the number
of mines exposing sulphidic waste rocks, tailings to the
atmosphere and/or leaving behind dewatered sulphidic rock
surrounding the mine void has increased the number of sites from
where acid mine drainage (AMD) may emanate with
consequential problems for the hydrological environment
including downstream catchments (Miller et al, 1996). The principles of ecologically sustainable development
(Brundtland, 1987) have been more or less ratified by all the
developed nations of the world and this has led, amongst other
things, to an expansion unprecedented in the research and
documentation of means for achieving long-term environmentally
acceptable stabilisation of solid wastes of all sorts. These have
revealed that AMD problems can be minimised and even reversed
in many cases by the integration or co-disposal of biodegradable
organic wastes with oxidising sulphidic wastes (Elliott et al,
1996). This paper considers how this might be achieved at mine sites
in Australia and the results encountered at some relevant sites.