The present paper deals with an original way to reduce the environmental damage caused to land and air resources by surface coal mines with external dumping, due to the transition to internal dumping with filling the worked out space of the surface mine with overburden. The basic principle of the proposed idea is the transition from the deepening longitudinal mining method for the development of inclined and steep coal seam strata to lateral ones. This article substantiates the choice of technology for a block-and-layer continuous lateral mining method, including the construction of a first-stage pit, the use of a combined transport and direct dumping technology for moving overburden to an internal dump when mining blocks using draglines. The advantage of the presented technology, along with filling the internal capacity of the surface mine field with overburden, is the possibility of leveling the relief within the boundaries of the pit allotment and the implementation of reclamation as the mining front moves forward, without waiting for the dump to be completely filled in the boundary contours. Attention is also paid to the economic benefits of block-layer technology and the continuous lateral mining method, in the transition to which the overburden transporting costs can be significantly reduced, while the limitations of the proposed method’s implementation concern specific coal deposits that make up a small part of the fields being developed today by surface mining.

Abstract. Kemerovo region is one of the largest industrial regions of Russia, with a raw material specialization. The rapid growth of the coal industry in recent years has been greatly facilitated by the expansion and development of open pit mining for coal seams extraction, accompanied by an increase in the volumes of overburden and the height of the dumps. There are about 400 objects in the Russian Federation Government Register of Waste Disposal Facilities 80% of which are dumps. Approaches both to external dumping and to the technical stage of reclamation currently contribute to the growth of geomorphic system's instability. Thus, it is proposed to slightly change the approaches to external dumping: the essence consists in the formation of an external dump of overburden, which in future would represent a favorable landscape unit of a flat surface relief used for subsequent differently directed purposes.

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