Construction activities have significant potential to have adverse environmental impacts. During this phase, often a large transient workforce is employed, workforce numbers tend to peak and material and equipment movements tend to be large. Impacts are typically related to land disturbance caused by earth- works, air emissions from dust, noise from equipment and construction activities and heavy volumes of traf- fic on access roads. In many cases, specialized third party companies and consultants conduct mine construction activities. ‘Turn key’ construction contracts are commonly awarded. The ability of the mine site's owner to con- trol environmental impacts can be maintained to some extent by considering potential issues and explicitly addressing them in the drafting of the.
