This article is most interesting, and I wish them success with their endeavours. I’m familiar with some of these old mines: in Britain we’ve mined for millennia. In fact, on a mountain ‘Mynydd Parys’ just across from my mountain-top farm in North Wales ~ there was a gold & silver mine that was already 1000 years old when the Romans invaded Britain. I used to take my dogs over there sometimes and the ‘tailings ponds’ were highly acidic; some plants still grew there though. I also conducted interviews with the caretaker staff at the mine, when I did an EIA for heavy metal pollutants going down the streams into the sea. Fascinating study.
So if this algal remediation works out well, this will be a neat solution to some pressing global problems. Well done 🙂