Legacy Soil Contamination at Abandoned Mine Sites: Making a Case for Guidance on Soil Protection

Within the European Union, guidance in the form of a uniform Soil Directive does not exist and member states are left to enact their own legislation governing historic soil contamination. Several historic or legacy sites exist in Cyprus - an EU member state with a long history of mining and a significant number of abandoned mining sites. The gold-silver enrichment plant of Mitsero village was abandoned 70 years ago, yet soil samples inside and outside the plant were extremely low in pH, exhibited high leachability of heavy metals and high cyanide levels. Water samples collected from an ephemeral stream located down-gradient of the site contained high levels of heavy metals. Two abandoned open-pit mines (Kokkinopezoula and Mathiatis) were investigated, where elevated metal content in soil samples from the surrounding streams and spoil heaps, and extremely low pH and high metal content in water samples from the mine crater were measured.