History Of Water Conservation In Shendong Mining Area, China

Shendong Coalfield is located in the semi-arid, semi-desert Ordos Basin of the NW China, where surface water is rare, the shallow Pleistocene Sala-u-su Formation is the main available aquifer and the environment is vulnerable. This article presents the history of water conservation in the Shendong Mining area since the 1980s.The coal excavation from the shallow-buried Jurassic Yan'an Formation inevitably destroys the surface water and Sala-u-su aquifer. At the beginning of the 1980s, a number of little coal mines mushroomed, and large areas of vegetation, the Sala-u-su aquifer and the environment were destroyed. In the late 1990s, these small coal mines were incorporated and water-conservation mining initiated in Shendong. In recent years, a new round of water conservation technologies are being researched and developed.