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Intro

A spoil tip (also called a boney pile, gob pile or culm bank) is a pile built of accumulated spoil – the overburden or other waste rock removed during coal and ore mining. These waste materials are typically composed of shale, as well as smaller quantities of carboniferous sandstone and various other residues. Spoil tips are not formed of slag, but in some areas they are referred to as slag heaps.

The term "spoil" is also used to refer to material removed when digging a foundation, tunnel, or other large excavation. Such material may be ordinary soil and rocks, or may be heavily contaminated with chemical waste, determining how it may be disposed of. Clean spoil may be used for land reclamation.

Spoil is distinct from tailings, which is the processed material that remains after the valuable components have been extracted from ore.

Re-use

Spoil tips in winter in Donetsk, Ukraine. Nature is reclaiming the spoil tip in the foreground.

Several techniques of re-utilising the spoil tips exist, usually including either geotechnics or recycling. Most commonly, old spoil tips are partially revegetated to provide valuable green spaces since they are inappropriate for building purposes. At Nœux-les-Mines, an artificial ski slope has been constructed on the tip. If spoil tips are considered to contain sufficient amounts of residual material, various methods are employed to remove the spoil from the site for subsequent processin

The oldest coal-based spoil tips may still contain enough coal to begin spontaneous slow combustion. This results in a form of vitrification of the shale, which then acquires sufficient mechanical strength to be of use in road construction. Some can therefore have a new life in being thus exploited; for example, the flattened pile of residue from the 11/19 site of Loos-en-Gohelle. Conversely, others are painstakingly preserved on account of their ecological wealth. With the passage of time, they become colonised with a variety of flora and fauna, sometimes foreign to the region. This diversity follows the mining exploitation. In South Wales some spoil tips are protected as Sites of Special Scientific Interest because they provide a unique habitat for 57 species of Lichen, several of which are at risk due to there limited environment being developed and by vegetation development.

For example, because the miners threw their apple or pear cores into the wagons, the spoil tips became colonised with fruit trees. One can even observe the proliferation of buckler-leaved sorrel (French sorrel – Rumex scutatus), the seeds of which have been carried within the cracks in the pine timber used in the mines. Furthermore, on account of its dark colour, the south face of the spoil tip is significantly warmer than its surroundings, which contributes to the diverse ecology of the area. In this way, the spoil tip of Pinchonvalles, at Avion, hosts 522 different varieties of higher plants. Some sixty species of birds nest there.

Some cultivate vines, as in the case of Spoil Tip No. 7 of the coal-mining region of Mariemont-Bascoup near Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont (province of Hainaut) which produces some 3,000 litres of wine each year.

Some spoil tips provide for various sporting activities. The slopes of the spoil tips of 11/19 at Loos-en-Gohelle, or again, at Nœux-les-Mines, are used for winter sports, for example ski and luge, since the provision of a piste on the flank of the heap. In Belgium, a long distance footpath along the spoil tips (GR-412, Sentier des terrils) was opened in 2005. It leads from Bernissart in western Hainaut to Blegny in the province of Liège.

In the United States, mining companies have not been allowed to leave behind abandoned piles since the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed in 1977. The Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center uses coal gob as a fuel source for energy production.