Operational and capital costs associated with water management depend on a number of factors including the volume and the quality of the water to be managed. Management costs or practices can be associated with the sizing and construction of water management dams, installing sufficient dewatering equipment, or treatment of water to an acceptable standard before release into the environment amongst others.
Future Flow GPMS has extensive experience in providing specialist input into water management plans. Typically, these studies require a thorough understanding of the groundwater environment and factors that govern flow volumes and patterns. Initial groundwater qualities and changes over time due to the operational activities are characterised using chemical and geochemical methods. In addition, it is often necessary to employ 3-D numerical groundwater flow and contaminant transport modelling to simulate complex and dynamic impacts to the groundwater environment and provide input into water balance calculations or to determine optimum dewatering and water handling strategies.
Water management plans typically include:
- Optimum dewatering approach (in-pit, out-of-pit, or combined);
- The required pre-development dewatering (lead time periods, pumping schedules, required drawdown in groundwater levels);
- Water management well field design (spatial layout, pumping schedules, borehole depths and construction);
- Operational dewatering volumes which feed into the water balance calculations;
- Initial water quality and the expected changes in quality over time due to the impacts from the proposed activities; and
- Equipment requirements (pump and piping sizes, water control dam sizing, water treatment plant capacities, plant and equipment compatibility with water qualities).
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