Dam Safety: Monitoring of Tailings Dams and Safety Reviews

Abstract

The awareness to tailings dam safety monitoring and reviews has increased by the catastrophes resulting from failures of such dams worsened by increasing tailings waste and construction of larger dams. The losses born by the mining industry from high costs of compensations and environmental rehabilitation work have brought this matter into focus. In the present article the need for safety monitoring programs of tailings dam is highlighted and mode of failures and factors leading to them are described. Basic principles of such programs are investigated with all phenomena needing observation described and their impacts explained. As in conventional dams this work is carried out by visual inspections and use of similar methods and instruments. In similar manners in both types of dams’ observation and measurements are done for measuring seepage water quantity and quality, phreatic surface level and pore pressure and total earth pressure values in addition to deformation measurements; and all are done by similar devices and methods such as weirs, piezometers, inclinometers, settlement plates and geodetic surveying. Basic differences between safety monitoring systems of the two types of dam, however, are presented in a tabular form. The continuity of safety monitoring of tailings dams is emphasized not only during the long construction phase but also after that in the abandonment and closure phase which can last indefinitely in order to watch for possible adverse effects on the environment and ecosystem due to the winds eroding and carrying of poisonous tailings contents, in addition to contaminated seepage water entering surface water streams and ground water. Justifications for using real time monitoring systems for recording and transmitting all data to the control center are presented with emphasis given on savings in both labor and time and need for the discovery of warning signs enabling raising earlier the alarm of possible failure or incident and the early taking of preventive measures. In this article it is argued that, in spite of the large investment of installing and running cost of comprehensive dam safety monitoring systems in tailings dams, such costs are justified as they form only a small percentage of the total investment in the tailings facilities projects, and may save huge costs if failure does happen. Such systems may be considered as an additional insurance against such events.

Plan Nacional de Atención y Manejo de Presas de Jales en México

“…De acuerdo con la literatura, en los últimos cien años, la tasa de falla de las presas de jales es del orden de 1.2 %. Es de notar en estas estadísticas que las fallas causadas por precipitaciones atípicas incrementaron de 25 % a 40 % a partir del año 2000 (Adamo et al, 2020).…”

Comparative analysis of Ukrainian and international standards in the context of mining tailings dam design requirements

“…The internationally recognized guidelines and recommendations for the design of tailings dams are the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), the Australian National Committee on Large Dams (ANCOLD) and the Application of Dam Safety Guidelines to Mining Dams (CDA) [6][7][8], [10], [12]. The principles and standards set out in these guidelines represent best global practices in the design and management of tailings dams [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

Advances in open source hydroinformatics for flood modeling and disaster education

“…The safety of these structures is an increasing concern in modern society, with a focus on the safety of dams and dikes (Toledo e Moran, 2022). Tailings dams, which are mining waste impounding structures, can pose higher failure rates and more safety concerns compared to conventional dams (Adamo et al, 2020a;Owen et al, 2020). Furthermore, embankment dams represent the most prevalent type of dam constructed on a global scale; however, their long-term stability poses a challenge due to a myriad of factors, including processes and human activities (Adamo et al, 2020b,a).…”