Bioengineering and standard erosion and sediment control

No specific guidelines exist for the use of bioengineered erosion and sediment control (ESC) techniques in mining and in-situ oil sands development. For this project, information was collected through interviews with, and documents acquired from, operational personnel from oil sands mining and in-situ companies in northern Alberta, and from coal mining companies in Alberta and British Columbia, as well as case studies from some municipalities in Alberta. This study compared conventional and bioengineering ESC techniques in different circumstances and focused on obtaining details on case studies that provide examples of successful approaches to ESC, or situations that lead to lessons learned and the identification of approaches to be avoided.

(1) conventional and bioengineering ESC techniques can be combined successfully; (2) rough and lose soil management is better on all scales for slowing water, capturing seeds and promoting vegetation growth; (3) vegetation establishment is discouraged where wildlife could increase human-wildlife conflicts, where rapid or certain ESC is required to manage safety risks, or where vegetation would obscure visual integrity inspections; (4) live plants require little maintenance once established and help manage water sources that cause erosion, stabilizing slopes with their root masses. They are best used away from high ESC risk areas such as at well pads, soil stock piles, bridges, roads and for the closure landscape.(4) irrigation techniques must be ensured for live plants during early months of establishment; (5) bioengineering ESC techniques can be challenging to implement for larger scale projects due to labour required for installation and limited availability of live cuttings (live plant cuttings could be grown in fields or rooted in nurseries); (6) erosion and control matting can be challenging to install, maintain and remove at reclamation, inhibits plant species diversity by promoting grass growth, and has been shown to fail on steeper and larger scale slopes.