M&A is developing a groundwater flow model using FEFLOW for the Rosario Pit area. Our goals are to identify geotechnical input parameters for the dewatering system and to develop recommendations for designing and locating dozens of dewatering wells in the area surrounding the Rosario Pit. The system will be instrumented with cemented-in transducers (in both vertical and horizontal boreholes) to measure pore pressures.

M&A designed, tested, and supervised the construction of the mine’s 13 production water wells. We also designed a program for monitoring impacts to groundwater and spring flow from pumping associated with mine operations. Program implementation entailed constructing weirs and installing electronic monitoring equipment.

M&A developed a groundwater flow model for the Coposa and Michincha basins to simulate the long-term impacts of groundwater pumping and to optimize well field design. We also developed a flow and transport model to evaluate the potential for dissolved chemical constituents to migrate away from waste rock and tailing impoundment areas and to impact downgradient groundwater resources. Particle tracking was used to evaluate the capture of groundwater potentially containing elevated concentrations of dissolved constituents.

M&A analyzed satellite imagery to establish a historic environmental baseline for the region’s salar basins. We used image processing and analysis techniques to identify areas covered by vegetation and surface water and to assign vegetation indices, which describe the abundance and health of vegetation communities. Our analysis considered not only basins that had been subjected to groundwater pumping but also those where pumping had not occurred; Our goal was to distinguish between the impacts of seasonal precipitation and groundwater pumping.