Ecological-hydrogeological history of the development of the coal industry in the Western Donbas under the influence of a complex of technogenic factors

Abstract

The Western Donbas is a mining-manufacturing region of Ukraine with a potential for increasing coal extraction in the following years. The operation of mines is followed by intense water drainage of highly mineralized ground water which accumulates in tailing ponds, which were built in the ravines without barriers screening the water-containing rocks. The problem of rational usage and protection from contamination and exhaustion of all types of water sources available for practical usage is relevant for the studied region, and all around the world. The development of a fundamental scientific solution to this problem was started in 1986, when a constantly operating mathematical model (COMM) of the changes in hydrogeological conditions of the Western Donbas was developed. The authors were the Pavlohrad Geological-Survey Expedition (PGSE), the Dnipropetrovsk Affiliate of the Institute of Mineral Resources (DAIMR) and the Department of Geology and Hydrogeology of O. Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University. It is a regional, multi-functional, constantly improved hydrogeological project limited in space but without a time limit. The COMM of the Western Donbas, along with the most obvious advantages, has one disadvantage. In spite of its small scale (1:100000) , it provides only a general characteristic of technogenic changes in the ground water regime of the territory and cannot constitute a single scientific basis for developing nature-protection hydrogeologic measures. Therefore,it has been supplemented with mathematical models of the territories adjacent to the local objects of technogenic impact on the ground water. This includes tailing ponds, tailing dams, mining dumps and mine drainage. The first three types of technogenic objects have already been sufficiently studied and described in scientific publications (Eugrashkina , 2011 ; Eugrashkina , 2012; Eugrashkina , 2013; Eugrashkina, 2013). This paper focuses on the mathematical models, changes in hydrogeological conditions under the impact of the fourth factor mine drainage. The first three factors contaminate ground water, the fourth causes decreases in the operational reserves as a result of flow of the fresh water from the upper horizons to the productive dried-out layer.