The Department of Mines and Energy of The Republic of Indonesia has incorporated certain aspects of U.S. mine reclamation regulations which were prepared by various states under PL 95-87, the Surface Mining and Coal Reclamation Act (SMCRA). One set of regulations used in developing the Indonesian guidelines are those developed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Mine Reclamation.
As one of the contributors to the development of those regulations, Mike Harding was invited by the U.S. Office of Surface Mining's liaison office in Jakarta to present a short course on erosion and sediment control to Indonesian mine inspectors for the Department of Mines and Energy. As a result of that workshop, Mike was invited to inspect a number of mining operations throughout Indonesia, observe their current reclamation practices and to suggest alternatives to current reclamation and re-vegetation practices where appropriate. One of the mines visited was the P.T. International Nickel Indonesia (P.T. INCO) operations at Soroako, South Sulawesi. Mike met with Mr. E.L. Parulian Marpaung and members of his engineering staff.
The island of Sulawesi contains one of the largest land-based nickel deposits in the world, covering more than 218,000 hectares. P.T. INCO's mining operations around Soroako comprise about 10,000 hectares. The terrain in this area is hilly and at 600 meters above sea level the vegetative cover is primarily equatorial rainforest. Annual precipitation is around 3000 mm per year.
In order to reduce the environmental impacts associated with it's nickel mining activities, P.T. INCO has developed a re-vegetation program. Implementation of this program is affected by adverse site conditions, including low soil fertility, low organic matter, mineral toxicity, soil acidity, loss of soil microbes and excessive soil erosion. As a result, replanting of trees has been difficult and often results in low survival and poor growth.
P.T. INCO has introduced several adaptive approaches to its re-forestation program to solve this problem, including selection and propagation of adaptive plant species, growth space improvement and training of field crews in silvicultural methods and post-mined land rehabilitation. In their efforts to reach their goal of 125 hectares of reclaimed land per year, P.T. INCO has worked closely with Dr. Y. Setiadi of the Forestry Department of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB).
