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REVEGETATION SERVICES OFFERS UNIQUE DESIGN/BUILD STRATEGIES
Revegetation Services article by Harold Hough Feb/March 2009

Anyone who has gone through any major project knows the routine. Engineers and architects come up with a great design. But, when the contractors come onboard, everything falls apart as the idealistic design meets cold reality. Next thing you know the engineers and architects are brought back to make necessary changes while charging hundreds of dollars per hour. Schedules are delayed and budget overruns creep in. No wonder reclamation projects can give mine managers grey hairs.

Unfortunately, until now, there was nothing a mine could do to solve this problem. Reclamation engineers didn’t have the experience in the field to make a great reclamation project come together flawlessly and the contractors, who actually did the reseeding and dirt work didn’t have the design skills to make an overall plan. That is, until now.

Revegetation Services is now offering “design/build” services, an efficient, and cost-effective approach to project delivery. “We couldn’t offer this unless we had the seasoned professionals with decades of mining reclamation experience on staff,” said Trenton Lund, who handles business development for Revegetation Services. “”This allows us to streamline a reclamation project and have the flexibility to create economical, high value and timely solutions as we proceed.”

Lund offers an example of how a blend of engineering and product knowledge can help lower costs. According to him, many engineers will solve the problem of erosion on terraced slopes with a “stone only” veneering solution. However, Revegetation Services is an installation specialist in Bonded Fiber Matrix (BFM), which is a specialty hydroseeding product that has very specific uses in different slope situations. BFM’s will reduce water runoff and channeling, while maximizing seed germination and plant growth. The applications can protect virtually any slope and soil type, including near-vertical surfaces.

Unless the mining engineer has used it before, they don’t recommend or utilize it. Subsequently, the stone only approach can cost two to three times as much as a modest combination of veneer and BFM. “There’s a real disconnect between mining engineering and new erosion control products,” noted Lund. “Our approach is to install the most effective combinations of Better Management Practices (BMPs), which ultimately helps control costs and improves the quality of the project.”

“Revegetation Services has an outside-of-the-box approach to streamlining mining reclamation,” noted Ron Mead, Senior Project Director. They are implementing this approach at an operating mine complex just south of Tucson, AZ where a part of the operation is being reclaimed. Revegetation Services has implemented its design/build services to significantly lower the projects overall reclamation costs and has proposed a novel approach in configuring the site’s future land use.

Instead of merely tearing out buildings, water lines, and capping the project, Revegetation Services proposed a native seed farm be constructed as a part of the final reclamation project. By utilizing the abandoned infrastructure, the result will be a working farm that will harvest and market the seeds of plants that are indigenous to the Southwest. Not only will this provide additional employment within the local economy, it will create the rare opportunity for a reclamation project to actually begin to pay for itself.

DUST CONTROL SOLUTIONS

There’s an old saying that, “If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” The same applies to companies who see their product as the solution to every problem. Revegetation Services is a consumer of many different products, so they can better advise which product can meet the mine’s specific needs.
One example is Revegetation Services’ use of using different products in the field of dust control. Dust suppression or control, is becoming a large environmental issue on the West Coast, but it’s an increasing concern nationally as well. The EPA is implementing more stringent regulations regarding the fine, dry dust in the air that comes from fields, haul roads, sand and gravel operations, and construction sites.

Revegetation Services uses both chemical and organic applications specifically designed to reduce fugitive dust particles while reducing the water requirement needed in alternate systems. They also have proprietary formulas and application processes developed to meet the various mining needs. For example, dust control was needed in an area that was under heavy environmental oversight and rigid watershed rules. RS was able to provide an organic application that had acceptable results and met all environmental regulations and concerns.

Changing dust control agents can also save money. One large mine, switched from a magnesium chloride treatment on seven miles of haul roads and reduced the water use for dust suppression by 99 percent or 110 million gallons of water per year. Water truck operating costs were reduced by $378,000 per year and the reduced water truck operation avoided the emission of 491 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year or the equivalent of removing 89 passenger vehicles from U.S. roads for a year.

If the disconnect between engineering and the work is complicating a reclamation project, maybe it’s time to simplify things by bringing in only one group that can do everything. “We do everything but move the big dirt piles,” noted Lund. He quickly added, “We figure mines are the best dirt movers anyway.”