WATER MANAGEMENT
• Supporting alerts, workflows and approvals so issues are reviewed and addressed early.
This removes a heavy reliance on spreadsheets, individual knowledge, and silos and retrospective checks. Environmental teams can see potential problems as they emerge in real time and take action now; not weeks or months later during compliance reporting.
IM: How are you seeing regulations and reporting evolve in the water management space?
SvdW: In the mining industry, water management regulation and reporting are becoming more detailed, more transparent and more data-driven.
Regulators are no longer focused only on end-of-period results. There is growing scrutiny on how water data is generated, validated and managed over time, and whether organisations can demonstrate active oversight of risks rather than just retrospective compliance.
A clear example of this can be seen in Canada under frameworks such as the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations. While the regulations themselves are well established, expectations around supporting data have evolved. Regulators are increasingly focused on data lineage, robust QA / QC processes and timely identification of trends before licence limits are exceeded. This has gone hand in hand with more frequent monitoring requirements and a shift towards digital and standardised reporting, making defensible, well-governed water data essential rather than optional.
In Australia, similar themes are emerging through statebased regulatory portals, tighter licence conditions and greater alignment between water monitoring, tailings governance and risk-based frameworks.
There is growing scrutiny on how water data is generated, validated and managed over time, and whether organisations can demonstrate active oversight of risks rather than just retrospective compliance, according to Acquire’ s Stuart van de Water
Across both jurisdictions, the common trend is a move away from reactive reporting towards continuous, auditable water data management. Rather than chasing individual regulatory changes, our focus is on helping customers build strong data foundations, so compliance becomes a natural outcome, and they are well positioned as regulations continue to evolve. overcome some of the perceived industry issues.
ATA is now progressing into its first fullscale front-end engineering design study in Australia, following pilot work with Harmony Gold in South Africa.
Across test work and piloting on a range of commodities, ATA has demonstrated rapid dewatering, achieving solids concentrations of up to 62 % after one minute of gravity dewatering on a # 70 mesh screen, together with an order of magnitude improvement in permeability over flocculated tailings and return water turbidity typically below 50 NTU, according to the company.
For operators weighing dry stacking, constrained tailings storage facility capacity, production bottlenecks or high water losses to tailings, the potential to use ATA with vacuum belt filtration rather than conventional thickening and high-pressure filtration may be significant, with typical cost savings of around 35 %.
Clean TeQ Water’ s circa-A $ 19.2 million($ 13.5 million) contract with Rio Tinto at
Rincon in Argentina applies standalone MBIX, branded CLEAN-IX ®, to soften lithium concentrate, with the aim of reducing lithium losses, waste volumes and freshwater demand in refining.
The same standalone MBIX capability has also now been demonstrated in uranium recovery for Heathgate Resources in South Australia, where the CLEAN- IX U-Column plant recently passed performance testing with all criteria met or exceeded, including improved eluate grades, reduced water use and stronger operating efficiency.
A CLEAN-IX elution plant for Heathgate Resources in South Australia
International Mining | MAY 2026