Stakeholder Values and Concerns Regarding
Mining Solid Waste and Mine Impacted Waters
Stakeholder concerns will vary widely depending on the interests and values of people. These interests and values start with public health and safety and quickly move to the ecological health of the environment and to individual economic well-being. Cultural and historic values also play an important role.

The public stakeholder attitude to existing mine waste or mine influenced waters will be based on the drivers identified above. These stakeholders will generally support planned activities that will ameliorate the adverse effects of the solid waste or impacted waters. However, they want to be assured that such activities “do no harm”. In other words, that the planned activities do not make the situation worse for any of the individual value drivers listed above. Unfortunately, occasionally the planned activities may improve one situation of interest to one group of stakeholders and at the same time worsen something of value to another group of stakeholders. For example, a remediation may improve the health of a watershed but forever change the landscape of the mine site that is of historical value to some stakeholders. Resolution of these possible conflicts requires open communications starting with the initial planning and continuing throughout the project.

Additional Stakeholder Considerations that are applicable to specific technologies are included in individual Technology Overviews (Section 8.0). These may be the result from the experience of the Mining team or reported in the case studies collected during this project.