Modeling and environmental risk assessment of Eastern Alborz Coal washing plant

Mining operations and mineral-related industries are closely and directly related with the environment. The negative impacts of mining industry on the environment, known as environmental risks, must be controlled and managed in a way to minimize harmful and destructive effects. Environmental risk assessment studies are a suitable step to identify, analyze and rank the risk factors. In this study a hybrid model has been presented to identify the environmental risks caused by coal washing plant in eastern Alborz in the form of 17 risk factors and introducing 8 criteria to assess them. Then their impact has been studied upon 12 environmental factors such as agriculture, ecology and so forth. In this regard, the risks for each of the affected environmental components have been assessed using linear assignment method, which is one of the most important multi- attribute decision-making methods. The results showed that in components of "area usage", "social issues", "surface water" and "underground water", the risks of "exposition of the plant and the tailing area", "tailing discharge considerations", "type of geological formations of the area" and "changing the usage of the area" have been ranked first, respectively and have been introduced as the most critical risks for the above-mentioned components.