Lab Report assignment
Part of the assessment for the Field and Laboratory Techniques I module is a lab report. You want to be hired by the government as a geochemical consultant to evaluate the impacts of a mine tailings dam spill in a hypothetical catchment in the Europe.
The catchment has a history of mining going back at least 1000 years. The only active mine left in the catchment is the ‘MSc Mine', a Cu-Zn mine exploiting ores from a volcanogenic massive sul-phide. The tailings dam at the MSc Mine failed on Monday September 14th, 2015, releasing 3 mil-lion m3 of contaminated water and 2 million m3 of tailings to the Birkbeck River system. Although a lot of tailings are deposited in the catchment, a lot still remain in the damaged tailings dam. The map below illustrates the location of the MSc Mine within the Birkbeck catchment. You will note that there is a paint manufacturing plant within the catchment, and a National Park downstream of the MSc Mine which hosts wading birds. The Birkbeck floodplain has mixed use: livestock grazing, arable and recreational (fishing and walking).
Your job is to design a geochemical (not mineralogical) sampling and follow-up laboratory analysis programme to evaluate the impacts of the tailings dam spill. In your report (of no more than 5000 words), you should address the following:
(1) Sample sites
(2) Sample types
(3) When the sampling would take place (note that you have one year to do your study).
(4) What analyses you would do on your samples (here you need to be quite specific: what elements would you analyse, which instruments would you use and why.
(5) What quality assurance you would carry out
(6) How you would use the results from your one-year study to plan further investigation (here you can be imaginative and think about possible mineralogical analysis).
You are a consultant bidding for this job. You should work with the idea that you have a maximum budget of £100,000 for the job, but that you would ideally keep the costs as low as possible so as to win the contract. Here are the costs for the analysis that you should use to put your proposal togeth-er:
Each field sampling day costs £1,000 and you can collect 50 samples per day
Water analyses: Each anion costs £5; each cation costs £5
Sediment analyses: Each cation analysis (after digestion) costs £10 (either by AAS or ICP - both costs are the same for this particular project).
You should write your report as a tender document (of no more than 5000 words) to the government outlining the above and using the following headings:
Executive summary: Summarise in less than 200 words the tailings dam spill accident, your plan for evaluating it and the estimated cost for your bid.
Introduction: Briefly describe the mine tailings dam spill using the information provided above.
Sampling Strategy: Outline your plans for sampling materials in order to evaluate the impact of the tailings dam spill. Use the map to show where you would take samples. Explain how many samples you would take and when you would take them. Include information on your quality assurance measures.
Analytical Strategy: Outline your plans for analysing the samples that you take, including informa-tion on the quality assurance measures you would take.
Recommendations for Further Work: Outline possible additional work that could take place after your one year of sampling has finished.
Reference list: Include a list of papers and websites that you read to prepared this report. Make sure that these are cited in the appropriate place in the body of the report.
You can use the following references to give you background on mine tailings dam spills and the sort of evaluation that can take place following them.
References
Hudson-Edwards, K.A., Macklin, M.G., Jamieson, H.E., Brewer, P.A., Coulthard, T.J., Howards, A.J., Turner, J. 2003. The impact of tailings dam spills and clean-up operations on sediment and water quality in river systems: The Ríos Agrio-Guadiamar, Aznalcóllar, Spain. Applied Geochemistry, 18, 229-239.
Kossoff, D., Dubbin, W.E., Alfredsson, M., Edwards, S.J., Macklin, M.G., Hudson-Edwards, K.A. 2014. Mine tailings dams: characteristics, failure, environmental impacts, and remediation. Applied Geochemistry, 51, 229-245.
Macklin, M.G., Brewer, P.A., Hudson-Edwards, K.A., Bird, G., Coulthard, T.J., Dennis, I.A., Lechler, P.J., Miller, J.R., Turner, J.N. 2006. A geomorphological approach to the management of rivers affected by metal mining. Geomor-phology, 79, 423-447.
Gold King Mine spill EPA site:
https://www2.epa.gov/goldkingmine
Volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits: https://www.fgel.uerj.br/dgap/disciplinas/Geoeconomica/papers/deposit_vms.galley.pdf