Mining and Water Quality: Regulations and practice in the U.S.

The U.S. mining industry continues to be an outstanding reference in the world. Terms and conditions for the mining existence have experienced profound transformations in the last decades equally involving regulatory reforms on environmental protection, safety and advances in equipment technologies. The United States environmental regulatory system leads the world in adopting mechanisms to set forth rules governing mining activities and the responsible use of resources from where the European Union and several other countries are identified and used similarly. In fact, U.S. mining corporations have expanded their scope to manage mines worldwide, dominating the mining industry and usually operating with the corporation’s own environmental standards, provide theirs are more stringent than in those countries. Water, under these considerations, is often the key element to highlight from the resulting convergence between environmental sustainable policies and mining operations. This book reviews the critical mining engineering practices related to water, legislation governing their interaction, agencies and other parties involved in these issues in the United States. Priorities have been given to those mining states located in the western arid zones (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming), whose water rights law falls under the prior appropriation doctrine. This document is intended to cover the basics of the mutual coexistence between water and mining. Many of the points discussed here are purely descriptive and should be understood in a broader context which may require further investigation and clarification.