Long-term management of tailings and tailings dams at decommissioned mining properties

British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium

Long-term management of tailings and tailings dams at decommissioned mining properties Baker, Fred A.; Berthelot, Debbie S.

Abstract

Recent additions to government legislation addressing mine closure issues and responsibilities, together with several recent unfortunate and significant failures of tailings containment systems have necessarily focussed industry and the public's attention on the long-term, even perpetual, requirement for management of tailings. A serious question now facing the mining industry and government is how these waste facilities can best be safely managed to ensure protection of human health and the environment in the long term. There are probably several viable alternatives, depending upon the actual specifics of the particular site. One option is considered to be management by a specialist third party contractor. In March 1998, Rio Algom Limited was presented with an opportunity to test third party management of a group of mine facilities situated in the Elliot Lake area, comprising of 11 mine sites and 7 closed and decommissioned tailings management areas with 5 active effluent treatment plants. This paper presents the approach to managing liability, cost and risk under third party management with a focus on facility inspection and maintenance programs.

Item Metadata

Title	Long-term management of tailings and tailings dams at decommissioned mining properties
Creator	Baker, Fred A.; Berthelot, Debbie S.
Contributor	British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium; University of British Columbia. Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering
Date Issued	1999
Description	Recent additions to government legislation addressing mine closure issues and responsibilities, together with several recent unfortunate and significant failures of tailings containment systems have necessarily focussed industry and the public's attention on the long-term, even perpetual, requirement for management of tailings. A serious question now facing the mining industry and government is how these waste facilities can best be safely managed to ensure protection of human health and the environment in the long term. There are probably several viable alternatives, depending upon the actual specifics of the particular site. One option is considered to be management by a specialist third party contractor. In March 1998, Rio Algom Limited was presented with an opportunity to test third party management of a group of mine facilities situated in the Elliot Lake area, comprising of 11 mine sites and 7 closed and decommissioned tailings management areas with 5 active effluent treatment plants. This paper presents the approach to managing liability, cost and risk under third party management with a focus on facility inspection and maintenance programs.
Extent	153180 bytes
Genre	Conference Paper
Type	Text
File Format	application/pdf
Language	eng
Date Available	2009-06-25
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI	10.14288/1.0042343
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9614
Affiliation	Non UBC
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Other
Copyright Holder	British Columbia Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

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