Water scarcity makes mining more difficult. Why do we waste so much on dust control?

Cape Town in South Africa famously endured five years of water scarcity, with inhabitants limited to 50 litres each per day – just enough for a quick shower, two litres of drinking water, one sink of dishes or laundry, one cooked meal, two hand washings and a toilet flush. Just this year, we saw similar shortages in places as diverse as Spain, Mexico and Zambia.
The global mining industry is already facing the consequences of growing water scarcity. In Australia, there is mounting community and government pressure for mine sites to use less water and manage it better.
In Chile, several mines recently had to stop operations altogether and find costly alternatives when a drought made fresh water unavailable.
More than half of all the world’s copper mines will be at risk of being shut down by drought by 2050, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Lithium and cobalt are at even higher risk of drought exposure — 74% of sites are expected to be affected.

“We have to prepare for the fact there are going to be another billion people added to the planet over the next 10 to 15 years, which will make it even more tricky to manage water in all areas of society and business,”
Chairman of the Board and Founder at Bind-X
The need to act now to avoid future pain
Martin Spitznagel, Chairman of the Board and Founder at Bind-X, says we in the mining sector need to be taking action to cut down on wasting water before it gets more expensive and more threatening to day-to-day operations.
“We have to prepare for the fact there are going to be another billion people added to the planet over the next 10 to 15 years, which will make it even more tricky to manage water in all areas of society and business,” Martin says.
“It’s going to be the most precious resource. That obviously affects mining, because water management is already one of the most important aspects when you’re running an existing or setting up a new project.”
While new projects are having to account for water savings, existing sites have less and less water available.

It doesn’t help that water allocation prices in Australia are shooting up and that more frequent water scarcity and drought is likely to drive water prices even higher for miners. Water entitlements across New South Wales increased in value from around AU$29 billion in 2021 to an estimated AU$34 billion in 2023 — a 17% increase in two years. If water wastage isn’t curbed, existing mines may struggle to keep their licence to operate and new projects will become unviable.
Martin says that, while many key operations on a mine are always going to be water hungry — most process plants require large amounts of water, for example — there is one area where savings can be made right now.
Billions of litres wasted on dust control
“Depending on the conditions of the mining area, dust control can be the main consumer of available water and is a key area where we could be using less. When you use plain water to keep the dust down, you may need to spray your roads and other areas up to five or six times a day. We’re talking billions of litres of water wasted every year.”
Most miners see water as the default option for dust suppression on roads, a hangover from a time when water was plentiful and cheap. Estimates suggest 70% of Australian mines are still using water alone, even as shortages loom and prices rocket. When you consider that the average site has between 50 and 100 km of roads, the amount of fresh water being thrown on the ground looks staggering.

It’s also not hard to come up with a realistic estimate. Using conservative numbers, let’s say the average site has only 50 km of roads, each 10 metres wide. Typically, water trucks apply a minimum of 2 litres of water per square metre of road. This can be more than five times per day but again, let’s use a conservative application frequency of twice per day.
That equates to 2 million litres of water per day. 730 million litres every year (of course, depending on climatic seasonalities).
With more than 350 operating mines in Australia, it’s likely that more than 250 billion litres of water gets poured onto dirt roads every year. And that’s just roads. We’re not even accounting for stockpiles, tailings, and open areas.
What’s the alternative?
Smart mine operators have begun to adapt to a changed environment. Many of them are now looking into less water-hungry alternatives for dust control. These include bitumen emulsions, polymers, salts and lignosulfonates, all of which have their own drawbacks and can still place heavy demands on your water allocation, not to mention your bottom line.
There is a new approach which has proven to slash water usage without reliance on crude oil-based or chemical products. Biological dust control removes the need to constantly rewater your roads by using microbes that bind the dust together, turning it into solid rock. These mineral-based bonds hold the dust particles together to form a smooth, solid surface and prevent them from becoming airborne. Martin says mines using this biological method have seen a dramatic reduction in water usage.
Most mines cut water consumption by more than 90% and significantly improve the road quality when they switch from plain water to biological dust control. It’s because you have a binding approach, not only a wettening approach, with a positive impact on the needed application frequency.
Cutting back on spraying roads reduces immediate operational pressure and, in the long run, will ensure that you can use your water budget for the process plant and reduce your risk of being impacted by shortages.

Reduce carbon emissions to break the cycle
It’s not just water that these sites are saving. Less frequent watering means less trucks and less fuel burned. When your trucks are out on the road all day, spraying a scarce resource, their emissions are compounding the problem by contributing to the climate change that is driving water shortages in the first place.
Martin says biological dust suppression promises to end that vicious circle.
“Why do we have a water problem?” Martin says.
“Besides human behaviour and mismanagement it’s mainly due to CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming leading to climate changes and desertification. If by saving water you have an indirect impact on reducing CO2 emissions, it means in the long run that you are also reducing the pressure from water scarcity.”
Water scarcity is a serious threat to mining operations. Taking action today to cut back on water wasted means you are setting your site up for tomorrow — and maybe even helping ease restrictions that promise to make operations more and more costly.