Dear Readers

Dear Readers,

As I write this (in mid-October), memories of the IMWA Congress are still fresh. I am certain that if you were fortunate enough to be able to attend, you enjoyed both the conference and the lovely city of Aachen; I know that I did. The organizers of the meeting, especially Prof. Thomas Rüde, deserve our thanks for a job well done!

I’d suggest that you keep your bags packed because it looks like 2012 will be another great year for mine water conferences. I am hoping to attend the International Congress on Management of Mining Risk and Environmental Impact in Marrakech, Morocco, in early April, the International Conference on Acid Rock Drainage in Ottawa in May, and of course the annual IMWA conference, which as you should all know by now, is scheduled for September 30–October 4, in Western Australia. I hope to see you, dear Reader, at one or more of these events. Please come up and introduce yourself and let me know what we can do to make this journal better for you.

I have commented in a previous column on one change for the better—we are publishing more papers in each issue. You will be pleased to learn that Springer has agreed to allow us to continue at this increased size through all of next year at no extra charge to IMWA (and by extension) to you. The timeliness of this change is fortunate as we are getting more manuscripts submitted all of the time and we have had to expand a little to avoid having a large backlog of papers, as some other journals have. This also allows us to publish a wider array of papers to hopefully satisfy all of our readers. For example, in this issue, you can read mine water papers on applied geochemistry, geophysics, and hydrology, as well as papers on the mine safety aspects of mine water and remediation of pit lakes.

We are also following up on a suggestion made at the Congress that we publish “informed opinion” contributions from our readers. We should have room for these since Christian has decided that starting in 2012, his Mine Water Notes will only be published electronically. So, we welcome your ideas and your input. To pave the way, I am working with Rafael Fernandez-Rubio to rewrite the closing talk that he gave at the Aachen Congress on how he believes mining will evolve over the next 20 years. With luck, that will be published here early in 2012. If you are interested in publishing your thoughts on any topic related to mine water, and want to discuss it before submitting it, please send me an e-mail.

Finally, I wanted to let you know that the book on pit lakes that Professors Walter Geller and Martin Schultze have been pulling together, and that many of you have contributed to, is almost done and will be published (in color) by Springer early in 2012. This is the second book organized and subsidized by IMWA as a service to our members. Please let Christian or me know if you are interested in undertaking a similar effort, for publication in 2013 or 2014; we may be able to facilitate your efforts.

On behalf of all of the editors, and our International Editorial Board, we wish you a very happy holiday season, and nothing but the best for 2012!

Best Regards,

Bob Kleinmann, Editor-in-Chief