Home-grown efforts to help prevent tailings dam failures

Measures put in place by the world’s largest mining operators aiming to reduce the incidence of tailings dam failures are being supported by the local supply chain. David Williams - Professor and Director of Geotechnical Engineering Centre at The University of Queensland Manager Large Open Pit Project There are 27-member companies of the International Council on Mining and Metals who own 30 per cent of the world’s active tailings dams and are signatories to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM). Both the GISTM and the Queensland Tailings Group (QTG) were set up in response to the catastrophic failure of the Vale-owned Brumadhino Tailings Dam in Brazil in January 2019, which took 270 lives. In this blog, QTG representative Professor David Williams from The University of Queensland says they are moving to inform and educate the industry to help prevent another tailings dam failure. “Tailings storage facilities are required to store the tailings produced in the processing of mineral ores, requiring interaction with miners, processing people, regulators, researchers, and students who might be considering going into the industry, so it's quite a range. The QTG aims to continue to foster this exchange of information, not only to the tailings community, but beyond as well, to the broader community we interact with. The simple fact is we have an unacceptably high rate of tailings dam failures, and some of them kill people and damage infrastructure and the environment. Related: Lessons from Tailings Dam Failures—Where to Go from Here? I think we need to have some renewed vigour in the engineering of tailings dams to turn this around, and it won't happen overnight. A bit like coal-fired power stations, you cannot close them down overnight because we've got nothing to replace them with. Changes to tailings management will be generational. As new tailings storage facilities are designed, constructed, operated, and closed, my hope is that we will manage tailings storage differently in the future. We'll consider a whole range of options, which is required not only under the Global Standard, but also the guidelines under which we operate, such as the Australian National Committee on Large Dams Tailings Guidelines. Education is also needed, not only for tailings practitioners, but also for the people who make decisions about expenditure on mines, to change the way we approach that.We must move beyond doing we've always done expecting a different outcome. We must also more seriously plan for closure, given that the Brumadinho tailings dam had been closed for about three years prior to it failing. We must aim for stable tailings landforms having no credible failure modes post-closure, given that there may be no one to maintain them.” Contact thequeenslandtailingsgroup@gmail.com for free membership and updates. (Photo: January 2019 Brumadinho Dam Failure in Brazil)

Home-grown efforts to help prevent tailings dam failures

Industry Queensland

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