Lower Carboniferous limestone has been extracted in the “Czatkowice” open-pit hill-slope quarry in southern Poland since 1947, for the needs of metallurgical and building industries, as well as farming. We can distinguish two aquifers in the Czatkowice area: the Quaternary porous aquifer and the Carboniferous fissure-porous one. Two vertical zones representing different hydrodynamic characteristics can be indentified in the Carboniferous formations. One is a weathering zone and the other one the zone of fissures and interbedding planes. Groundwater inflows into the quarry workings have been observed at the lowest mining level (+315 m above the sea level (asl)) for over 30 years. This study concerns two hypotheses of the sources of such inflows originating either from (a) the aeration zone or from (b) the saturation zone. Inflows into the quarry combine into one stream flowing gravitationally to the doline under the pile in the western part of the quarry. This situation does not cause a dewatering need. Extending eastward mining and lowering of the exploitation level lead to increased inflows.

Stemming plugs are one of the widely used accessory in surface mining operations. Stemming plugs assist conventional stemming material in gas retention and help in better fragmentation and explosive utilization. Effective use of the stemming plugs results in economic benefits and enhance the efficacy of the project. Economic and productive viability of stemming plugs have been conducted in depth by different researchers. Addition of stemming plugs to a new system requires ergonomic challenges for operators conducting drilling and blasting operation. Induction of a newer product in already established system is subject to overall positive feedback. This work investigates ergonomics of three different stemming plugs introduced to a limestone quarry in Pakistan. The stemming plugs were evaluated based on extra time needed, workers feedback, failures during operation, recovery time after failure and number of extra equipment required to carry out the operation. Points based matrix was established with likeliness of each plug and based on overall scores stemming plug 1 was most acceptable followed by stemming plug 3. Stemming plug 2 was disliked by operation and did not reach the level of acceptability of operators. This work will help stemming plug making industry in adapting to best practices by incorporating ergonomics of plugs in designing. Literature shows no previous work on ergonomics of stemming plugs.