Corinne Unger

Legacy Issues and Abandoned Mines

The chapter summarises the principal problems associated with current approaches to closure planning. Then it discusses the critical relationship between effective mitigation and management of mining legacies and abandoned mines. In the third section, I review global and Australian initiatives on mining legacies. Then, drawing upon global leading practices, I develop a maturity model to guide jurisdictions as they move toward more mature management of abandoned mines. In the fifth section, I present a case study of the abandoned Mount Morgan gold mine in Queensland, Australia. Throughout the chapter, I draw attention both to the importance of fully accounting for liabilities to internalise costs, and to the benefits that can flow to industry, governments and communities when beneficial post-mining land uses are created.