Résumé
The Mining Environmental Impact Assessment Methodology (MEIAM) is developed to allow predicting environmental and human health impacts on mining projects. It combines both the chronic and the accidental sources of impacts, and that at all phases of the life cycle of the project, including the prospection and the after closure of the mine. The method is designed to address all environmental problems: groundwater, surface water, soil, air, fauna and flora. A case study to test the feasibility of MEIAM and to compare its outputs to the usual approach has been carried out for the Afema gold mine located in Côte d’Ivoire. The case study was restricted to the groundwater. The results of this implementation were compared with those obtained by using the matrices method in the EIA study of this mining project. The two methods led to different conclusions. Unlike the EIA study, MEIAM identifies and evaluates many pollution scenarios. In the EIA study the potential groundwater pollution scenario involving soils leaching and, working face (open pit borders) were not considered. In addition, the exploration phase was not considered in the EIA study. The present work concluded that the impact of groundwater pollution is high at the operation and the closure phases, while previous study indicated an average impact (for the few considered scenarios). For these high impacts, some measures have been proposed to protect groundwater resources. MEIAM better assesses the impact of pollution by considering the intrinsic parameters (geology, climate, initial state of the environmental component) of the mine site, the nature of the potential pollutants and feedbacks. It may therefore be of considerable value in mining projects.