The common cattail (Typha spp.) is one of the world’s hardiest plants. It thrives throughout the world wherever the ground is wet.  Typically, cattails are the first plants to colonize the disturbed ground and tailings basins on mine sites. This occurs in wet ground whether the site is alkaline or acid because cattails secrete polysaccharides within their root zone to nourish bacteria which moderate the pH; in effect the cattails create micro-niches within which ARUM occurs.

Boojum encourages the growth of cattails on mine sites by creating terraces or ponds in gullies and drainage ditch to slow the passage of water. Boojum also establishes floating cattail islands on the surface of tailings ponds and treatment cells. The cattails are seeded into floating cradles, which sustain them in their early phases of growth but eventually a growing ball of organic matter trapped in their root mass, provides sufficient buoyancy.

Floating cattail covers provide many benefits in mine waste water treatment: 

– they reduce wave action, thereby minimizing oxygen entrainment in the water column which reduces the activity of acidophilic bacteria;

– the cattail roots trail downwards in the water column, providing surface area and nourishment for a large host of attached bacteria which not only neutralize pH but break-down nitrogen compounds, the residues of explosives, commonly found in waste waters from mine sites;

– the cattails themselves draw nitrogen from the water;

– the root mass removes suspended solids from the water at a rate of up to 2.2 kg m^-2.y^-1of floating cattail cover;

– and finally, organic matter falling from the cattails nourishes bacteria in the sediment underlying the mine wastewater body.

For a PDF, please send an email to: margarete.kalin@utoronto.ca

C91 Smith, M.P. and M. Kalin, 2000 Floating wetland vegetation covers for suspended solids removal. Proceedings of the Quebec 2000: Millennium Wetland Event (Selected Papers), Treatment Wetlands for Water Quality Removal”, Quebec City, Quebec, August 6-12. , pp. 143-148.

C68 Kalin, M., A. Fyson and M.P. Smith, 1995. Microbially-mediated metal removal from acid mine drainage. Proceedings of the Mining and Environment Conference, Sudbury, Ontario, May 28-June 1, pp. 459-466, Vol. II.