Over the past two years an independent minerals industry consultancy has developed a new bioremediation process which has the potential to make a significant improvement to the visual impact problems often quoted as being associated with limestone quarrying, road and rail cuttings.A research project was set up to investigate if it would be possible to harvest the microbial community inhabiting undisturbed areas adjacent to quarrying operations, and transfer it to recently exposed quarry faces. The intention was to accelerate the colonization of the barren rock by pioneering micro-organisms which generally take several decades to become established, and thereby provide a platform which higher life forms could subsequently exploit; thus "kick-starting" the natural ecological process.
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