Dayjil Buhle is a Senior Associate Water Resources Engineer based in the Brisbane office. Dayjil shares her experience of how water accounting has evolved since its inception in 2012 to be a valuable onsite assessment tool for ATCW clients.
What is Water Accounting?
In 2012, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) released the first ‘User Guide for the Water Accounting Framework (WAF)’. As a water engineer, over the next thirteen years, I would work with this new framework on an almost daily basis (and sometimes even see it in my sleep!).
Water availability has an essential role in the lifecycle of a mine site. Whether that be a water surplus or a water shortfall, understanding the volume and quality of water in a water management system is crucial to approvals, operations and closure.
As part of the operational phase of mining, clients often produce water accounting statements. These might be published publicly in annual monitoring or sustainability reports or utilised for internal comparison and compliance purposes.
The benefits of Water Accounting
Rather than water accounting feeling like a box-ticking process, at ATC Williams, we recognise that water accounting is highly beneficial to clients and provides much-needed clarity on the water management system. The key benefits for clients include:
- Identifying data gaps
- Providing a better understanding of the water availability onsite
- Assisting with cost, time, and risk management.
Water Accounting in Action at Glencore Coal
In 2013, I worked on a project for Glencore Coal to roll out the WAF to all sixteen of their Queensland and NSW operations. I conducted many site visits to gain an understanding of how the site water management systems worked. I identified all of the inflows and outflows from the site while also assessing:
- how flows were monitored (measured, simulated or estimated);
- the confidence in those flows (high, medium or low); and
- the associated water quality category for the flows.
We needed to understand water usage on site for key demands such as the Coal Handling and Preparation Plant and truck fill dust suppression. You can imagine that this process took time and required patience from the client while I sought to ensure we understood the system and could report as accurately as possible.
During the process, it became apparent that we were achieving two by-products from the reporting process, identifying data gaps and providing site personnel with a greater understanding of water on site. Both offered the client great benefit.
Once the WAFs were developed in the first year, it was important to keep water balance models and water management schematics up to date. Whenever a material change occurred on site, it was included in the water reporting. After several sequential years, it was apparent that the WAFs were serving as a data repository that provided an easily accessible data set for water balance model calibration.
How Water Accounting Adds Value
Anyone who has had to compile a long dataset with flow meter data, production tonnes and stored water volumes will know that this can be a time-consuming process. Having an organised method with annually verified data adds significant benefit to clients in terms of cost, time, and risk management.
For Glencore Coal, the compiled WAF data is utilised in model calibrations at multiple sites. The result is increased confidence in the flows simulated by the site’s water balance for reporting purposes. A calibrated water balance model also provides increased confidence in forecast model simulations and reduces risk for the client when investigating changes to water management onsite, whether for infrastructure upgrades or approval projects.
At ATCW, our highly experienced water team provides comprehensive services for your water management projects across the mining, resources, and government sectors. By combining diverse engineering capabilities, we assist clients in finding solutions for the most challenging water management projects.
Talk to us about your water management project – contact Dayjil Buhle at +61 7 3352 7222
