With a strong tradition of service to the mining and energy industry COOE professionals are able to assist our clients achieve their sustainability objectives at every stage of their operation.

COOE is well established in the mining and energy sector. Our senior staff have considerable experience and technical expertise to quickly and fully understand our clients project needs and deliver a service tailored to meet their specific requirements.

COOE offers a comprehensive environmental support service to assist our clients with:

Exploration

• Develop environmental management plans
• Undertake site rehabilitation
• Undertake baseline environmental surveys

Feasibility / Start-up

• Undertake environmental investigations to assist in preparing:
  • Environmental Impact Statements
  • Mining And Rehabilitation Programs (MARP)
  • All other permitting requirements.

Construction

• Provide technical support and environmental supervision
• Implement environmental monitoring programs
• Train environmental staff

Operational

• Develop and implement Environmental Management Systems (EMS)
• Prepare environmental reports such as the Annual Environmental Report and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER).
• Develop and implement environmental monitoring programs – COOE specialises in monitoring programs that provide information to management in a useful form, provide scientific confidence in data without over sampling and help the client identify environmental issues before they become a problem.
• Undertake studies, investigations, audits or research in any aspect of mining or oil and gas such as:
  • acid mine drainage
  • ecosystem function analysis
  • vegetation surveys
  • fauna (marine and terrestrial) surveys
  • water and air quality
  • odour
  • dust suppression
  • waste management
  • waste rock characterization
  • groundwater (chemistry and fauna)
  • environmental toxicology

• Provide environmental staff on secondment from the graduate level through to environmental superintendent level to help during peak periods and while key staff are on leave.
• Train or mentor staff on site, this is especially useful for operations that do not have an internal environmental training system. 

Monitoring

COOE staff can design and implement monitoring programs that are scientifically defensible, cost effective and provide valuable management tools for our clients.

The monitoring programs we provide include:

• Water quality
• Soil chemistry and moisture content
• Dust / Air quality
• Environmental Functional Analysis (vegetation and landform)
• Erosion in terrestrial and marine environments
• Topsoil management
• Vegetation surveys
• Fauna (terrestrial and aquatic) surveys including specialist fields:
• Stygofauna
• Rocky reef / Coral
• Seagrass
• Intertidal and mangrove fauna
• Metal accumulation
• Marine and river sediments
• Oceanography (Thermo cline, currents)

Rehabilitation

COOE has extensive technical expertise in mine rehabilitation research, land forming engineering design, project management and implementation, monitoring and training. COOE has developed tools for tracking closure and facilitate the recovery of environmental bonds as rapidly as possible.

COOE can train local stakeholders in seed harvesting and storage techniques, tree planting and seeding. COOE can provide seeding, spraying, pest control and other equipment and supervision to ensure revegetation success.

Professional Hire or Secondments

COOE provides environmental professionals on permanent placement, long term assignments or short term secondments fully supported (if needed) by our experienced senior professionals.  This provides our clients with continuity of services during peak work loads or while staff are on vacation. Once established our mine environmental specialists will become familiar with your site, your people and your culture.

We can also provide graduates or junior environmental staff backed by technical support from our highly experienced senior professionals.

Benefits to the client:

1. The client minimises their exposure to environmental non-compliance and costly shut downs,
2. Maintains continuity of monitoring programs and reporting,
3. Management are informed of any environmental incident and have someone on the ground who can implement an environmental response in a timely manner,
4. Frees up management time because COOE screens, trains and provides technical support to the environmental advisor, and
5. Saves the loss of recruitment fees, relocation expenses should the person not workout.

Waste rock characterization

Physical and geochemical characterisation of waste rock is essential for developing rehabilitation programs and acid leachate management plan.

This service is especially useful for the older mine sites to inform clients of potential liabilities (such as acid generation) and identify potential resources (such as suitable construction material, site remediation materials and even low grade ore).