Addressing the risk of surface water intrusion in old Romanian salt mines

In Romania, surface waters near underground salt mines represent a significant risk to the stability of the mine workings. Such problems occur in many salt exploiting facilities, i.e. Slanic Prahova, Targu Ocna, Praid. In this paper, the authors present a method of dealing with this issue at the Praid salt mine with research targeted at avoiding the hazard presented by intrusion of surface waters into old mine workings. Monitoring activities are proposed to prevent damage due to the seepage of Corund Creek water into the subsurface salt body, which could compromise and even produce collapses in the salt mine sanatorium and old and new mines. © 2007 Springer-Verlag.