International Mine Water Association Leadership by Term

In 2023 the International Mine Water Association (IMWA) was led by President Prof. Dr. Christian Wolkersdorfer of Pretoria, South Africa, with Dr. Lotta Sartz as General Secretary and Elke Mugova as Treasurer, according to IMWA’s roster for the 2021 to 2024 council. He remains President on the 2024 to 2027 roster, but the General Secretary and Treasurer posts changed hands. This page sets out the officers for both terms, explains how the council is chosen, and then covers what the association’s field actually shows about mining impacts on water.

Consultants usually need these details for a citation, a conference contact or a check on who signed a document. Each name below comes from IMWA’s own published rosters, and each water figure comes from a named federal or state report.

International Mine Water Association leadership in the previous term

This is the council that sat through 2023. The Newport conference in July of that year took place during its term.

A co-opted councillor is someone the council brings in, as distinct from the councillors listed in the main group. The roster prints Dr. Kleinmann as both Bob and Robert, so follow the form used in the document you are citing.

Who leads IMWA now: the current council

The current roster keeps the President and both Vice Presidents. The main changes are in the two administrative posts: Elke Mugova moved from Treasurer to General Secretary, and Dr. Selina Bamforth became Treasurer. Dr. Sartz is now a co-opted councillor.

The roster page was last updated on 13 July 2026, so check it again before you quote it in a formal document.

IMWA presidents since 1979

IMWA lists its past presidents as honorary presidents, with their years, on the same council page. The table adds Prof. Wolkersdorfer from the 2017 to 2021 roster onward. The honorary list has a one-year gap between 1990 and 1991, shown here as printed.

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Years in office, selected IMWA presidents

Years as printed on IMWA rosters; Wolkersdorfer counted to the end of the current term

Before becoming President, Prof. Wolkersdorfer served as General Secretary, a post shown on the 2014 to 2017 roster. That continuity matters when you read old papers: the same person can appear under different titles depending on the year.

How the IMWA Executive Council is chosen

According to IMWA’s council page, the General Assembly elects the Executive Council every 3 years, and the council runs the association between Assembly sessions. It consists of:

• a President;
• up to two Vice Presidents;
• a Secretary General (shown as General Secretary on the rosters);
• a Treasurer;
• eight members, including the Past President.

The roster labels do not always fall on neat three-year lines. One term is labelled 2017 to 2021, and the next 2021 to 2024. If you need the officer on a specific date, such as the signature on a letter, confirm it with the secretariat, because the rosters give terms and not handover days.

What IMWA does and where its work is published

IMWA’s stated objectives include better protection of the environment from mine drainage, better use of mine water, and improved technology and economics in drainage operations. Its home page reported 518 members and dues of €70 (a rate unchanged since 2019) when it was last updated in July 2026. Members receive the quarterly journal and meeting discounts. The association was founded in 1979 in Granada, Spain, and its journal began in 1982, taking the name Mine Water and the Environment in 1994.

The journal’s impact factor is listed by IMWA as 2.200 for 2025, with a five-year figure of 2.4. An impact factor measures average citations to a journal’s articles. It says nothing about any single paper.

The association’s membership page gives contact details for the secretariat in Lakewood, Colorado, and for the General Secretary in Bochum. Those are the right places for questions about officers or membership records.

Recent and upcoming IMWA meetings

IMWA holds congresses and, in the years between them, conferences. The conference list and congress list give most of these recent and upcoming events; the 2024 and 2026 places come from the linked reports:

The 2023 proceedings name P. Stanley, C. Wolkersdorfer, K. Wolkersdorfer and E. Mugova as editors. One research centre that attended the Braga event reported 317 participants from 37 countries.

If you want an academic article on mining impacts on water without paying for one, start with the proceedings. The 2022 Christchurch volume is a 105 MB download with papers on passive treatment, manganese in mine water, and water planning. Summaries of this literature also appear in our reviews of recent research on mining and watersheds and the IMWA research on mine water.

Papers also show how national groups connect to the association. A 2021 editorial in the journal by Qiang Wu describes China’s National Committee of IMWA and records that the China University of Mining and Technology hosted the 12th Congress in 2014, with more than 380 experts from more than 30 countries.

Tracing quoted phrases about the association

Some readers arrive after searching phrases such as “a different leader represented the association” or “acknowledges the same association”. These strings have no author, year or journal attached, so they cannot be cited as they stand. The practical route is to match each search to a document that can be checked.

A phrase with no author, year or publisher should be treated as unsupported until you find the primary document. This is also a common sign of a generated reference, which is worth remembering when you check a report’s bibliography.

The scale of mining impacts on water in the United States

The best-documented national numbers come from the Government Accountability Office. In report GAO-20-238 (March 2020), it found that federal agencies had identified at least 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features, such as shafts, pits and waste piles. Agencies estimated more than 390,000 further features not yet in their databases. About 22,500 of the identified features pose or may pose environmental hazards.

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Abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land

Number of features, thousands

A hardrock mine produces metals such as gold, silver or copper, as opposed to coal. The first figure is a count of records and the second is an estimate, so adding them gives a rough total at best.

Researchers at the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center wrote in October 2025 that federal agencies estimate over a hundred thousand miles of streams are impaired by mining waste. Pennsylvania shows the local scale, and that state’s problem is largely coal. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission says more than 5,500 miles of the state’s waterways are polluted by abandoned mine discharges.

Three types of mine drainage

The EPA separates abandoned mine drainage into three kinds and says it is normally associated with coal mining:

• Acid mine drainage: the most prevalent type. Water reacts with sulfur-bearing rock, forms sulfuric acid and can carry heavy metals.
• Alkaline mine drainage: typically occurs where calcite or dolomite is present.
• Metal mine drainage: water with high levels of lead or other metals.

When you read a site report, check which type it describes, because the type shapes the sampling plan and the treatment choice.

▶ The seven environmental impacts of mining, explained in clay · 2:31

What federal spending shows about water damage

GAO-20-238 found that federal agencies spent about $287 million a year on abandoned hardrock mine hazards in fiscal years 2008 to 2017, about $2.9 billion in total. About 88% of that (about $2.5 billion) went to environmental hazards, and private parties reimbursed about $1 billion. Environmental spending covers more than water, so read it as an upper guide to the water share.

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USDA estimate of fiscal exposure, abandoned hardrock mines

US$ billion, before and after the March 2023 revision

A later report, GAO-23-105408 (January 2023), found the Department of the Interior spent about $109 million and the Department of Agriculture about $10 million on contamination cleanup at these mines in fiscal years 2017 to 2021. Both said they have more such mines than funds to clean them. GAO’s central criticism was that the agencies did not clearly identify which cleanup costs in their reporting belonged to abandoned hardrock mines.

USDA then raised its estimate of fiscal exposure from about $6 billion to $12 billion in March 2023, in its budget notes for fiscal year 2024. Fiscal exposure means costs the government may face, so this is not the same as money spent.

States fund part of this work too. Pennsylvania’s Acid Mine Drainage Set-Aside Program, first authorized in 1990 and expanded in 2006, can place up to 30% of certain annual Abandoned Mine Land grant funds into a treatment account.

Estimate a watershed’s cleanup exposure

The calculator below applies ratios we worked out from GAO’s figures to a feature count you enter, which gives a first scoping number for a district. It is a spending ratio based on past federal work, so it is not an engineering cost and it leaves out long-term water treatment.

What would change these numbers

The main variable is the law. The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act, passed in December 2024, lets EPA run a pilot of up to 15 permits for low-risk cleanups over seven years, and protects permit holders from Superfund and Clean Water Act liability for permitted work. Superfund is the federal law that can make a party liable for hazardous releases. That liability long deterred state agencies and nonprofit groups.

On 9 September 2026, EPA announced the first permit. It went to Trout Unlimited for the Bodie Mine site in the Wauconda Mining District, Okanogan County, Washington, where exposed mill tailings (the finely ground waste left after processing) are eroding into Toroda Creek. EPA’s program update sets a goal of having all 15 pilot projects approved and underway by summer 2028, depending on applicants.

Fifteen permits are small against hundreds of thousands of features. The pilot’s value is as a test, and its results will show whether a wider program is workable.

A checklist for verifying any mine-water claim

1. Ask for four details. Author, year, publisher and a locator such as a DOI or report number. A claim missing two of them is not yet a citation.
2. Search the exact phrase. If a supposed quotation appears only on aggregator sites, treat it as unverified.
3. Open the primary document. Report numbers such as GAO-20-238 outlast changes to a web address.
4. Check the date against the cycle. IMWA’s council changes on a roughly three-year cycle, so an officer named without a year may be out of date.
5. Separate counts from estimates. GAO’s 140,000 is a count and its 390,000 is an estimate.
6. Prefer the agency to the summary. Go to EPA, GAO or the state agency that published the figure.

For the engineering side, see our guide to water management systems for mining, our notes on sustainable gold mining practices and the earlier overview of mining impacts on water areas. If you need outside help, our guides to geological consulting firms and mining consultants in Australia cover how to compare them. Exploration targeting explains the earlier stage of a project.

Where satellite monitoring fits

Satellites can show surface disturbance, changes in the extent of a pond or waste pile, and vegetation stress along a drainage line between visits. They cannot measure pH, dissolved iron or metal loading, which all need water samples. In practice, imagery helps a consultant decide where a limited sampling budget should go.

Farmonaut works with satellite data on mining sites; its wider product pages cover traceability, fleet management, carbon footprinting, loan and insurance verification, large-scale land management and a satellite and weather API.

▶ Remote sensing for mining explained without jargon · 2:01

Frequently asked questions

Who was the president of the International Mine Water Association?

In 2023 it was Prof. Dr. Christian Wolkersdorfer of Pretoria, South Africa, according to IMWA’s roster for the 2021 to 2024 council.

Who is the current IMWA president?

Prof. Dr. Christian Wolkersdorfer, on the 2024 to 2027 roster last updated in July 2026.

Who was IMWA’s General Secretary?

In 2023 it was Dr. Lotta Sartz of Kopparberg, Sweden. Elke Mugova holds the post on the 2024 to 2027 roster.

Who were the IMWA vice presidents?

In 2023 they were Dr. Bob Kleinmann of Pittsburgh, USA, and Prof. Dr Qiang Wu of Beijing, China.

How often does IMWA change its leadership?

The General Assembly elects the Executive Council every 3 years, though officers can continue across terms.

Where was the IMWA conference held?

In Newport, Wales, from 17 to 21 July 2023, under the title Y Dyfodol | The Future.

Which academic article contains “a different leader represented the association”?

That string has no author, year or journal attached, so it cannot be cited as it stands. For facts on who led IMWA, use the published council rosters.

Which association do mine-water articles acknowledge?

It varies by paper. IMWA publishes Mine Water and the Environment, but check the acknowledgements in the specific paper, where funders and other bodies are named.

How many US streams are affected by mining?

Federal agencies estimate over a hundred thousand miles of streams are impaired by mining waste, as reported by the Getches-Wilkinson Center in October 2025.

Has EPA issued a Good Samaritan permit?

Yes. EPA announced the first on 9 September 2026, to Trout Unlimited for the Bodie Mine site in Washington.

Can satellites detect acid mine drainage?

They show surface signs, such as disturbance and vegetation stress along drainage paths. Confirming the water chemistry requires sampling.