In a bid to improve mining practices, a $25M project is set to begin next month which will see miners in different districts exposed to dry-mining and tailings’ management methods.
The pilot projects are being executed through the Guyana Environmental Capacity Building Project (GENCAPD) in collaboration with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA). GENCAPD is a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) project.
The project is in response to the need to reduce the amount of tailings being generated currently, project engineer Peter Hutson said. He explained that the project’s objective encompasses small and medium-scale miners being able to do dry-stripping, meaning that in their operations, the miners will remove the topsoil material that does not contain an economical value of gold, without water and use water to mine just the “pay gravel” (the gold bearing soil), which would reduce the volume of tailings being generated.
A second component of the project involves tailings and water management. The importance of recycling water and tailings pond management and methods will be highlighted. The project will begin in Isseneru in Region Seven to be followed by demonstrations in the Mahdia district and then the North-West District. Hutson said that Isseneru was chosen because the Amerindian village had recently granted permission for 15 dredges to operate there and it will be a good and timely intervention so that any potential environmental pollution can be eliminated.
A second $5M project will look at re-planting mining sites after operations are completed. In the clearing phase, organic material will be set aside and this will be used to encourage rapid re-growth. Hutson described the venture as “a strategic approach to mining” and it is envisioned that three and a half months will be spent at each site. He said that it is hoped that the success of the project will stimulate the imaginations of miners and they would continue to utilize the methods.
He said that there were economic benefits to dry-mining pointing out that in those areas, the topsoil has high clay content and when normal methods involving water to remove the topsoil is used, the rate of recovery of gold is reduced since the particles tend to stick together. He said with the dry-mining the recovery rate for gold is much higher and there is better control of the processing rate.
The engineer said the project was slated to start at Isseneru by June 1 before moving on but that would depend on the findings.
