Rehabilitation in Mine Closure - Environmental, Economic & Social Tradeoff in Opencast Coal Mine - A Case Study
Dr. Manoj Kumar, Mgr(M)*
Citation : Manoj Kumar, Rehabilitation in Mine Closure - Environmental, Economic & Social Tradeoff in Opencast Coal Mine - A Case StudyInternational Journal of Research in Environmental Science 2019, 5(3) :16-24.
This paper presents an overview of requirements of rehabilitation, restoration, reclamation and remediation, the terms usually interchangeable and closely linked in the mining areas, its environmental, economic & social tradeoff Indian coal mining scenarios. This study is based on two scenario, scenario I as being practiced as per MCP guidelines and Scenario II as introducing solar PV power plant in MCP process. The study reveals that scenario II has an edge over Scenario I in the field of environment, Social and economic tradeoff. Rehabilitation process in scenario II would restrict 0.18 Million tons of GHG emission @ 7114.4 tons of CO2e per annum, equivalent to 634 Ha of forest absorbing CO2. Rehabilitation process will further benefits about thirty thousand population covering 9.33% of the household in the nearby community by providing clean energy at the tune of 6624.0537 MWh/year. Economic benefit of this rehabilitation process may include 4.3 crores of revenue per year amounting to Rs. 30 crores to the mine management and Rs. 43 crores to the communities after the closure of mine activities. This would facilitate the mine management to fund the corpus for escrow fund from 12th year itself amounting to 30 crores. This rehabilitation process will result into increased reimbursement opportunity by Rs. 10 crores over 5.9 crores as in scenario I. This will facilitate the mine management in resolving their inability to reimburse the corpus fund deposited in escrow fund as per MCP guideline.