2015-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2015 Volume 4: Meech Intl. Symp. / Mining Operations
| Editors: | Kongoli F, Veiga MM, Anderson C |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2015 |
| Pages: | 275 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-27-0 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
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Environmental Impacts Caused by Small Mining in the Municipality of Picui, Paraiba, Brazil
Francisco Souza1;1IFPB, Campina Grande, Brazil;
Type of Paper: Regular
Id Paper: 240
Topic: 4
Abstract:
The municipality of Picui, located in the Northeast region of Brazil, offers, as one of the main economic activities, mineral extractive activities that work as the basis of livelihood for many local families. As well as in neighboring municipalities, Picui also suffers from long periods of droughts, preventing people who reside in rural area to practice family farming, being forced to seek sustenance through mineral activity. The mineral exploration is performed, generally, in open pit mining, in pegmatite and granite bodies. The execution in pegmatite bodies aims to extract their minerals such as feldspar, quartz, mica, beryl and tantalite. On the other hand, the granite bodies are plowed aiming the production of paving blocks of streets. The marketing of these products is made by COOPICUI and by middlemen in the region. The mineral activity in the municipality is developed in small mines without any environmental planning and tilling, where small-scale miners use rudimentary tools and techniques to exploit mineral substances useful to the market. The lack of mineral activity planning in the municipality of Picui has caused several environmental impacts, notably, in addition to the strong visual impact of cavas, the deposition of tailings which are placed in inappropriate environments, causing fauna and flora extinction and neighboring water resources siltation. Mitigating measures to try to minimize this problem should be adopted, like, for example, the hiring of technical expertise and awareness of the small miner, once the opencast mining is a potential activity causing major environmental impacts.
KEYWORDS: Extractive activities, pegmatite and granite bodies, environmental impacts.