Mining dam disasters ...

Mining dam disasters seemingly continue to happen even after decades of worldwide incidents. Here is one that my company helped remediate. Obed Mine, Alberta Canada. In my experience the use of previously mined pits as containment areas for tailings has serious flaws. With many jurisdictions now outlawing the practice. Having to engineer a proper storage facility reduces the risk greatly but is an expensive undertaking and even then failure is possible. The tailings problem can be eliminated but requires costly treatment to separate water from solids. If you remove water from the tailings the problem of dam failure is removed. No water = No dam. The use of polymers in conjunction with a mechanical means of separation is currently the industry best practice. In my opinion miners around the globe need to start including the separation and treatment of tailings water before storage as a part of the mines capital and operational costs. This does not solve the tailings problem as you are left with soilds that have highly concentrated heavy metals and other toxic contaminants but it does remove catastrophic failure from the equation.