An Environmental–Economic Benefit for Sustainability Assessment of Highly Mineralized Mine Water Reuse

With the rapid economic and social development and the increasingly severe water shortage situation, the sustainable utilization of unconventional water resources is of great significance. As one of the “second water sources”, the full utilization of highly mineralized mine water (HMMW) is a key strategy for promoting sustainable development in water-scarce regions. It has obvious resource, environmental, and economic benefits that are central to sustainability. However, the mechanism of the impact of HMMW utilization on water utilization, the environment, and the economy is still unclear, making it difficult to evaluate its overall sustainability performance and to provide scientific data support to promote HMMW utilization. Therefore, this paper develops a novel sustainability-oriented accounting framework to assess the environmental–economic sustainability of HMMW utilization. Firstly, this paper proposes the method of calculating the HMMW utilization environmental benefits, proposes a novel integrated environmental–economic input–output accounting framework, which refines the HMMW sector from the traditional water industry and integrates the environmental benefits into a balanced input–output table. Secondly, taking Ningdong Energy Chemical Industry Base (NECI Base) as an example, this paper conducts applied research on the integrated environmental–economic accounting of HMMW utilization: (I) The HMMW environmental benefits of NECI Base are calculated, the utilization of 22.69 million m3 of HMMW generated environmental benefits, valued at 233.69 million CNY, demonstrating its substantial contribution to environmental sustainability. The compiled environmental–economic input–output table passed the balance verification, confirming the robustness and practicality of the accounting method.