Skip to main content
article

One of the biggest mistakes on haul roads is overwatering. Here’s how to avoid it.

On mine site haul roads, dust control is essential. But mine sites that just use plain water to manage dust are making a costly mistake. When you understand how water impacts road structure and stability, you can save significant resources and discover productivity wins.


For most mining managers, road construction isn’t what they’re experts in. The roads just have to be good enough to get the dirt from the pit to the plant. This knowledge gap often leads to an over-reliance on water as a sole dust-control method.

However, civil engineering experts agree: water alone is a short-term fix that ultimately degrades road quality.

“Once you apply water to a road, it evaporates quickly so you have to reapply it multiple times per day to keep dust down. This leads to overwatering.”

“The immediate impact is that it’s unsafe for haul trucks to travel on an overwatered road. But over time this overwatering also causes erosion, leading to potholes, rutting, and frequent maintenance cycles.”

Alex McHaffie
General Manager at Bind-X

The hidden costs of overwatering 

Mines often use plain water for dust control because it’s easy to apply and inexpensive. Yet, frequent watering can actually be more expensive and more time consuming. As water sinks into haul roads, it loosens surface particles, causing the finer materials to wash away and erode the roadbed. This erosion breaks down the road’s load-bearing structure and makes roads more susceptible to rutting and soft spots. Civil engineers caution that, without stabilisation, these weakened road surfaces make hauling slower and reduce mine productivity.

Overwatering harms roads and it also drains critical resources. The demand on water carts for repeated applications increases fuel use, labour hours, and vehicle maintenance. In areas where water is scarce, like many Australian mining regions, this approach quickly becomes unsustainable.

When mines adopt road stabilisation methods they can cut down on water usage and maintain stronger road surfaces.

How stabilised roads improve productivity 

Road quality has a direct impact on a mine’s operational efficiency. When haul roads remain stable and dust-free, trucks can travel faster, water carts come off the road, cycle times speed up, and fewer breakdowns occur. Stabilised roads reduce how often the upper wearing course needs to be re-laid, which means less frequent maintenance. 

Mining operations that adopt more advanced dust control measures see improvements that extend beyond the haul roads. There are new methods available that require fewer applications of water while creating more durable haul roads and longer maintenance intervals. 

“Many mining managers tried outdated dust suppression methods in the past, and only saw marginal benefits. But it’s 2024 now, there’s been a massive technology change in the past couple of years. There are better options out there that give you long-term production and environmental benefits,” says McHaffie. 

One of the newer categories of dust control products on the market is a biological-based approach first discovered at Murdoch University in Western Australia. Created for mining haul roads by Bind-X, it forms a solid layer like cement to hold the road materials in place, creating stability and significantly reducing dust.  

Mining operations that are already using the product have seen up to a 90% reduction in water usage on their haul roads, posing significantly less strain on water resources.  

Looking for other options

While water remains an easy fallback, it’s time for mines to look beyond ‘what’s been done before’ and do more to find ways to reduce water usage. Mines that have already chosen to stabilise haul roads with new dust control technology have found several advantages: 

  • Improved road durability: Roads retain their shape and support higher loads with minimal maintenance. 
  • Reduced water and resource use: Fewer applications lead to decreased water usage, less truck time, and lower carbon emissions. 
  • Enhanced productivity: Faster cycle times, fewer repairs, and clean audits from regulatory bodies reflect a well-managed, efficient operation. 

As McHaffie points out, plain water as a dust control method may seem effective at first, but it actually puts mining managers “in an endless maintenance cycle,” as it fails to strengthen the road surface. Mines that break this cycle with biological methods find themselves not only meeting — but often exceeding — their production goals, all while conserving precious resources. 

If you know haul roads, you know they need more than water to perform at their best. Wasting water on roads remains one of the biggest and most avoidable mistakes in the mining industry. By investing in methods that stabilise road surfaces, mining managers can take a critical step towards better roads, more loads, and long-term increases in throughput. 

Find out about biological dust control for your site