About Us

The objectives of the ADTI-MMS are to identify, evaluate, develop, and disseminate information about cost effective, environmentally sound methods and technologies to manage mine wastes and related metallurgical materials for abandoned, active and future mining and associated operations and to promote understanding of these technologies. Drainage quality issues will be considered for ore and waste as well as from alkaline, neutral and acidic conditions in the mining and related metallurgical processing environment. This is a technical initiative, not a regulatory or policy initiative. Activities will be coordinated with other related national and international organizations with similar interests and be carried out using voluntary consensus standardization procedures.
More specifically, the goals of the ADTI-MMS include:

Finding ways to reduce the extent and severity of adverse impacts of drainage from mine wastes and mining related materials.
Develop consensus on environmental mine waste management technologies for sampling and monitoring, drainage quality prediction, mitigation, and modeling.
Identify technological needs and work to address these needs.
Use sound scientific and technological fundamentals to interpret, assess, and summarize published literature and operational practices; communicate these findings to those responsible for environmental mine waste management.

Progress on Identification and Evaluation of Existing Methods, Technologies, Data:

Workbooks on Sampling and Monitoring, Prediction, Remediation, and Modeling are under preparation. A Synopsis and a Methods Appendix are in the planning stage.
In a cooperative program with ASTM, USGS, USBLM, EPA and NIST, the ADTI-MMS has developed several standardized testing methods for mine and metallurgical waste characterization, as well as a series of mine waste standard reference materials.

Information Dissemination

Information compiled will be disseminated via the ADTI-MMS website (current website address ese.mines.edu/adti/index.html), publications from workbooks, literature reviews and primary research, and workshops.

Research

The University Center for the ADTI-MMS is the Mining Life-Cycle Center at the Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada, Reno. The Western Universities Consortium is a cooperative venture of the University of Nevada, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, University of Utah, University of Idaho and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The Consortium is dedicated to research, development, education and outreach related to reclamation and restoration of abandoned non-coal mines in the Western US.

The ADTI-MMS also includes a university network, among which requests for proposals will be circulated. In addition to the Consortium universities, the network presently consists of Northern Arizona University, University of California (Berkeley), the Colorado School of Mines, Desert Research Institute, University of Missouri (Rolla), Montana State University - Bozeman, Montana Tech of the University of Montana, University of New Mexico, and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

Research funding is actively sought from federal and state agencies, mining companies and other sources.

The membership of the ADTI-MMS consists of volunteer representatives from state and federal government, academia, the mining industry, and consulting firms who are involved in the technologies to manage metal-mine wastes in the United States. Overall direction for the ADTI-MMS is provided by a Steering Committee that has representatives on the Operations Committee of ADTI. The latter also include members from the Coal Mining Sector (ADTI-CMS).

Please see the membership page for more information about becoming a member.