Langer Heinrich to Give Mine Back to Nature

Adam Hartman

24 May 2011

When Langer Heinrich Uranium Mine (LHM) closes, at least 20 years from now, it intends to leave the environment as close as possible to the way it was before they started their mining activities.

The mine is already working very closely with the ‘Millennium Seed Bank Project’ (Namibian branch) to collect as many seeds as possible from various grass and plant species found in the mine’s license area, which will be kept and sown back into the environment as part of the environmental restoration strategy which falls in the mine’s closure plan.

“While we are becoming one of the leading uranium producers in the country, and are fairly new at the game, we are already looking at restoring the environment to the state we found it in,” said LHM Environmental Specialist, Werner Petrick.

According to Petrick, the ‘seed restoration project’ will also serve as a benchmark study in the arid environment of the central Namib Naukluft National Park for similar projects.

“We still have a lot to learn from keeping seeds and eventually restoring the natural flora in projects like this in Namibia. This is an important experiment, not only for ourselves and the mine, but for any other similar initiative,” said Namibian representative for Millennium Seed Bank Project, Herta Kohlberg.

Nine unemployed people were invited to participate in the seed-collecting from the large variety of grasses, shrubs and bushes within the mining licence area. These are placed in bags, which also identifies the coordinates of the area for future restoration.

According to Kohlberg, the bags of seed will be taken to the ‘seed bank’ in Windhoek, where they will be sorted and sealed in air-tight packaging in a deep-freezer (seeds can be kept for up to 300 years in a vacuum-packed frozen state).

Once Langer Heinrich mine is ready to restore a specific site, the seed will be brought back and sown in the coordinated area. And with a little help from nature, the environment will be restored,

The mine, from its inception, also collected and stockpiled important top-soil before excavating an area for uranium. The top-soil will be kept, and once mining in an area is completed, the pits will be filled with ‘tailings material’ (waste product from processing) and soil and topped up with the top-soil again. Seed will be sown in relevant areas, and the area will be restored to its natural state, also taking other factors like groundwater flow and pollution prevention into consideration.

As part of the restoration project, the mine is also building a nursery, where seeds will be grown, and the existing flora in excavation areas are ‘nursed’, ready to be reintroduced into the area once mining is complete.

“Some plants will grow and reproduce from the seeds, while other plants, mainly tree-types, would have to be removed from a site, nursed, and then reintroduced to the area they’ve been taken from. The nursery will be a holding area for these,” said LHM Environmental Manager, Charles Cleghorn.

The seed collection was done specifically during the good rain season while there are plentiful plants and seed.

“During the dry season, there’s hardly anything here to harvest,” said Kohlberg.

Besides the restoration of flora, the mine is also ensuring that the enormous waste-rock piles are “landscaped” to blend it with the surrounding environment, while – when the mine completely closes down – even the infrastructure will be dumped into a large pit and covered.

“It’s amazing to see how nature will eventually take care of itself. Some trial areas on the stockpiles are already teeming with plants after the good rains experienced in and around the Mining License area during the last few months..,” said Cleghorn.

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