Mining waste

One of the agendas of the state geological service provided by the Czech Geological Survey (CGS) involves mining waste, based on Act No. 157/2009 Coll., on mining waste management. Specifically, the CGS is tasked with identifying closed and abandoned mining waste facilities posing serious environmental and human health hazards (pursuant to § 17, par. 4 a) and with maintaining an inventory of such sites (pursuant to § 17, par. 4 b).

Inventory development

Mining waste has been inventoried in the Czech Republic since 2001, when the MoE discussed the possibility of developing a mine waste dumps database. Data began to be collected in 2002. The database structure was modified and expanded in 2006, and renamed the Mining Waste Database.

Act on mining waste management

Act No. 157/2009 Coll., on mining waste management and amending certain acts, which implements the provisions of Directive 2006/21/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the management of waste from extractive industries and amending Directive 2004/35/EC, went into effect during 2009. The act defines waste facilities (according to § 2 c). Furthermore, the act defined a number of obligations for waste facility operators and state authorities. Section 17 stipulates that the Ministry of the Environment must identify closed and abandoned mining waste facilities posing serious environmental and human health hazards, maintain an inventory of such sites, and ensure that it is updated regularly. It may delegate the management of the inventory to another legal entity. This occurred in 2012, when this task was assigned to the CGS and became part of its founding charter.

Project of the Operational Programme Environment

During the Operational Programme Environment (OPE), the CGS developed the Identification Of Closed and Abandoned Mining Waste Facilities Posing Serious Environmental or Human Health Hazards project in 2009, which was carried out in 20102012. The project was divided into seven work packages and its aim was to sort existing source documents, to develop a new method for evaluating mining waste facilities, and to create an Inventory of Mining Waste Facilities of the Czech Republic, which became part of the CGS Information System. The project included the selection of 300 potentially hazardous sites due to possible occurrence of materials with elevated pollutant concentrations. Samples, which were analyzed and evaluated, were repeatedly collected at the sites. All project documents are filed under the CGS P000013/2013 and CGS P000024/2013 – CGS P000411/2013 ID codes in the CGS Geofond Archive.