• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.397-401
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• 2005

Acid mine drainage and waste of abandoned mine area have caused serious water pollution and destruction of an ecosystem because of exposing to environment without an appropriate treatment. Gwang-yang mine area also has a serious problem in the nearby residential area and waterway ecosystems. The objectives of this research are to develop the most suitable remediation system for acid mine drainage by using waste materials, and to diagnose stream environments impacted by acid mine drainage through the new ecological health assessment methodology, and thus ultimately providing a restoring methodology to mining regions. In the water system health assessment, the result of ESHI model, RBP and Karr suggested by US EPA is revised by ecological features of our country, come to ESHI score 13; 'Very poor' at some points. Together with pH value and heavy metal concentration, it's the aggravation of ecological health index caused by chemical disturbances. In the acid mine drainage treatment, we apply marine shells and slags to this system. Slags had the best removal ability for heavy metals, but pH value was more than 10 exceeding the standard for drain water. In case of marine shells, pH of treated water maintained 7 to 8, and concentrations of Fe and Zn decreased significantly after treatment.