Environmental Assessment
Volume E-3.3
Tailings Facility
Soils
Ambatovy Project
30
January 2006
Since tailings area soils are formed on migmatite parent materials, they are
naturally acidic, low in nutrients and well drained (on upper slopes). The
development of these soils for an agriculture land use would require ameliorating
the acidity (liming), fertilization to correct for nutrient deficiencies and good
erosion protection.
Soils in the alluvial depressions are hydromorphic soils (Histosols) with some
surficial peat accumulation and gleying in the underlying clay-rich mineral
horizon. Although nutrient poor, these soils are suitable for rice paddy
production, especially when nutrient deficiencies are addressed through
fertilization.
Additional details concerning baseline conditions are provided in Volume I,
Appendix 3.1.
3.3.3
Impact Assesssment
3.3.3.1 Issue Scoping
The list of issues from the Terms of Reference (Volume H, Appendix 1) and the
public consultation program (Volume A, Section 6) were reviewed to focus the
soil assessment on key issues and group the issues into common themes.
As part of this process, an interaction matrix was used to evaluate all possible
tailings facilities with soil resources (Table 3.3-1). The interactions were rated to
highlight the key issues and to help focus the assessment. Only those activities
rated moderate or high were analyzed in detail in the assessment. The main
potential issues relating to soils are:
•
soil removal and disturbance;
•
soil erosion;
•
loss of soil nutrients;
•
soil compaction;
•
soil contamination; and
•
reclamation.
