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Abstract
Mine tailings impoundment failures continue to occur at unacceptable rates. The
worldwide mining industry has experienced roughly one significant impoundment failure
per year over the past 30 years. Many of these failure events have resulted in massive
damage, severe economical impact and, in several cases, loss of life.
A tailings impoundment failure case history database has been developed. In
addition to an overview of this database, the basic features of a number of specific case
histories are presented that provide valuable lessons to the industry. From the overall
database, failure modes, failure impacts, and failure frequency are identified. The review
of failure modes shows that most events can be attributed to easily preventable causes - a
disappointing conclusion but one that offers a readily identifiable solution. The review of
failure impacts indicates the large scale of immediate economic losses and expensive
longer-term harm resulting from tailings dam failures.
The paper shows there are clear trends that arise from objectively reviewing tailings
dam failure case histories. Understanding these trends greatly assists in enhancing
design, construction, operation and closure stewardship of mine tailings facilities. As
demonstrated by a review of case histories, an ignorance of past failure events and the
lessons offered by these events can be highly contributory to subsequent failures.
The mining industry is at a crossroads with tailings impoundment performance - is
the relatively constant failure frequency trend for the past 30 years going to continue or
decrease as we enter this new century?
The 46-m high Estrocho de Rientes dam in Spain breached in April 1802 following first
filling of the reservoir. The town of Lorca was inundated and approximately 600 people
lost their lives.
On May 31, 1889, the 22-m high South Fork dam in Pennsylvania initially overtopped
and, within three hours, fully breached. The flood damage included 2209 fatalities.
On October 9, 1963, an overtopping event of the 266 m high Vaiont Dam in Italy
occurred as a result of a reservoir landslide. The resulting landslide induced wave
passed over the dam roughly 250 m above the crest and swept down more than 500 m
into the valley below killing about 2500 people in the villages of Longarone, Pirago,
Villanova, Rivalta and Fae. The actual dam structure was essentially undamaged by
the overtopping event.
Conventional dams continue to be constructed to greater heights with greater
storage volumes. However, the safety record of conventional dams has been steadily
improving over the past 40 years to the point that the probability of a conventional dam
failure in any given year is roughly 1 in 10,000. As will be shown in this paper, this safety
trend is not the case for mine tailings dams which appear to be failing at a rate at least ten
times higher than that for conventional dams. Some make a different argument (e.g.
Bruce et al., 1997), implying that tailings dams are equally "safe" as conventional dams
and that both are being built to at least the same "state-of-the-art" practice. This latter
interpretation of the statistical database is common and worrisome as it can lead to a
complacent attitude. It also does not appear to account for the fact that tailings dams can
undergo environmental failures while maintaining physical integrity - an issue not readily
associated with conventional dams.
The authors support efforts to show the mining industry in a good light with respect
to the tailings dam performance history. Recent trends and initiatives in tailings dam
stewardship, spearheaded by the mining industry, are extremely positive and encouraging
(Martin and Davies, 2000), though these initiatives tend to get ignored by a relatively
biased news media. However, an objective evaluation of the tailings dam failure database
illustrates that many tailings dams are not being designed, constructed and/or operated to
adequate standards. Moreover, the safety record of tailings dams cannot be considered
acceptable given the tremendous damage to the overall mining industry that every new
failure provides.
Tailings dams currently have a higher profile in the mining process than at any
previous period. There has been a dramatic increase over the past ten years in the
number of regulatory agencies involved in setting prescriptive and/or rigid guidelines. The
number of mining companies with internal programs aimed specifically at assessing
current and planned tailings dams likely outnumbers those who do not have such
programs; at least for medium to large sized organizations. An increasing number of
undergraduate programs offer at least some form of training in the basics of tailings dam
design and the number of graduate theses published on tailings dams has roughly
doubled over the past decade. Design professionals have an increasing number of
technical forums to update their skills and compare design competency with their peers.
So why do failures of tailings dams continue to occur? The failures are not just of
older facilities constructed without formal designs, but include facilities designed and
commissioned in the past 5 to 20 years - supposedly the "modern age" of tailings dam
engineering.
The first step in evaluating the reasons for continued tailings dam failures comes
from recognizing the uniqueness of mine tailings dams. The unique attributes include:
Tailings impoundments are among the largest manmade structures with several
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approaching 1 x 10 tonnes of stored slurried tailings;
Tailings dams are built on a continuous basis by mine operators; and
Tailings dams are a cost to the mining process - they do not generate a revenue
stream akin to a hydroelectric dam.
Mining companies typically do not have in-house geotechnical expertise, instead there is
reliance on periodic design and perhaps construction monitoring from consulting
engineers. Most large-scale water supply and/or hydroelectric agencies more often than
not have very capable dam designers and surveillance engineers/technicians in-house.
Owners of large conventional dams also typically retain an independent board of eminent
consultants to provide expert third-party review. This is not a typical practice in mining at
this time.
Are the unique features of tailings dams the reason for the failure trends? The
authors suggest that a combination of factors including a lack of input from appropriate
external consultants and/or the reliance on third-party consultants without adequate review
of their work are highly contributory to the failure trends. As noted by Davies and Martin
(2000), there are basic requirements for a designer working in tailings dam engineering
and these requirements need to be followed.
This paper examines the phenomenon of tailings dam failure, or, when things go
wrong." The paper is not geared at assigning blame for dam failures but takes the
approach that most, if not all, of the failures that have occurred fit into a very consistent
set of trends. This consistency is emphasized with the clear premise that if one becomes
familiar enough with these trends, future failure events will not arise from an ignorance of
the lessons offered by the failure database. If the mining industry collectively embraces
the lessons from these trends, the current profile surrounding tailings dams can perhaps
wane considerably as the safety record for tailings dams improves to the standard
demanded by those who are so quick to criticize the industry.
Definition of Failure
When tailings dams go wrong, it is to say that they have failed. Websters'
dictionary offers the following for defining failure: falling short, weakening, breakdown in
operation, neglect, not succeeding, becoming bankrupt. All of these have some
appropriateness with tailings dam incidents. Leonards (1982) in his Terzaghi lecture
defines failure as "an unacceptable difference between expected and observed
performance".
The authors suggest the terminology offered by Leonards (1982) captures what
failure means in the context of tailings dams. Failures need not be catastrophic flow
failures for those who wish to learn the most from the errors of others. In fact, there are
dramatically more "mundane" failures to learn from (e.g. compare the USEPA "failure"
case histories, USEPA, 1997, with the USCOLD, 1994, "failure incident" summary
document). While the more catastrophic failures gather the most attention and certainly
dominate the typical failure databases that get developed, the same trends and lessons
are available from the lesser failures (also called "upsets" by many in the industry). As the
lesser failures tend to get very little publicity, and almost never any technical publication,
practitioners of tailings dam design should keep their own database developed from
observations obtained from reviews, audits and the like.
Table 1 -
Direct Expenses
Deferred Cash Flow
Loss of Asset Value
Drop in Share Price
1
Data partially from Vick, 1997.
~$14
$16
25%
>$10
N/A
$53
N/A
~$80
N/A
N/A
$43 impact in 1996
$34
~$10
N/A
~50%
Tailings dam failures have also resulted in loss of life during extreme events.
Table 2 presents a list of the case histories involving fatalities. There are several other
incidents, several in the former Soviet Union, where fatalities have occurred but the details
of the event and/or the actual number of fatalities are difficult to ascertain.
Table 2 - Examples of Fatalities from Tailings Impoundment Failures
Date
Name
Location
Ore
Dam Type
Failure Cause
Fatalities
1928
1937
Barahona
Dos Estrellas
Chile
Cu
Au
upstream
upstream
earthquake
slope instability
54
70
Cu
Pb/Z
n
Cu
upstream
upstream
earthquake
unknown
>300
(>10)
89
1965
1966
El Cobre
Mir
Mexico
Chile
Bulgaria
1970
Mufulira
Zambia
1974
Bafokeng
Pt
upstream
1985
1986
Stava
Huangmeishan
South
Africa
Italy
China
F
Fe
upstream
upstream
1988
Jinduicheng
China
Mo
1993
1994
Marsa
Harmony
(Merriespruit)
Surigao del
Norte
Peru
South
Africa
Philippines
Au
Au
upstream
upstream
Au
upstream
1995
12
slope instability
seepage/slope
instability
dam breach
(spillway blockage)
overtopping
overtopping/slope
instability
foundation failure
269
19
Total Fatalities
>878
20
6
17
12
Finally, as society becomes more litigious, there are increasing legal ramifications
for company owners and, in some recent cases, their design consultants. These legal
considerations can be more than purely financial as criminal charges were considered in
at least two tailings dam failures in the past fifteen years (e.g. involuntary manslaughter).
There is no reason to expect this litigious trend to subside in at least the foreseeable
future.
and 90,000 m of water were released. The slurry traveled about 2 km covering nearly
2
500,000 m . Given the downstream population, it is fortunate that not more than 17
people lost their lives in this tragedy.
Stava, Italy - 1985
Perhaps the most tragic tailings dam failure to date occurred on July 19, 1985. A
flourite mine, located near Stava in Northern Italy, had both of its tailings dams fail
3
suddenly and release approximately 240,000 m of liquefied tailings. The liquefied mass
moved up to speeds of 60 km/h obliterating everything in its path for a stretch of some 4km. The flowslide destroyed the village of Stava and also caused considerable damage at
Tesero, at the junction of Stava Creek and the Avisio River at the 4 km point from the
mine.
The tailings dams were both nearly 25 m high with one directly upstream of the
other. The failure mechanism began with failure of the upper dam that in turn overtopped
and failed the lower dam as well. The dams were upstream constructed with outer slopes
from 1.2 to 1.5 horizontal to 1 vertical. Based upon the likely state of the in-situ tailings,
the soil mechanics curiosity with this failure is that the dams could attain such a height
prior to failure. There is no question that the design of these dams was not consistent with
even the most elementary of engineering principals available at the time. There are a
number of "rules" for upstream tailings dam engineering (Davies and Martin, 2000) that
were understood for many years prior to the Stava failure. The Stava dams both broke far
more of these rules than they followed.
Los Frailes, Spain - 1997
Possibly the most publicized tailings dam failure in history was the 1997 Los Frailes
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3
event in Spain. A shallow foundation failure led to the release more than 3 x 10 m of
process water and tailings from one of two adjacent ponds within an overall impoundment.
For this failure, a lack of understanding of the prevailing foundation conditions was directly
attributable to a design that was contraindicated by site conditions.
The Los Frailes incident, besides demonstrating the immense power of the media
to bring tailings dam failure events to a worldwide audience in a matter of hours, allows a
candid assessment of how such incidents can have immediate, and dramatic, impact on a
mining company's finances. While other events were certainly at play in 1998, the failure
triggered an immediate negative market response. The event occurred at only one of a
number of mines for a relatively major mining company. The dramatic share devaluation
in 1998 demonstrated the collective impact a single tailings failure event can have on at
least medium-term investment confidence in a given corporation.
Omai, Guyana - 1994
Another highly publicized event, the internal erosion failure of the Omai mine's
tailings dam, involved a dam breach and the release of cyanide-laden water to the Omai
River and then to the much larger Essequibo River. This event caused debatable
environmental damage with reports of downstream devastation far outstripping the ability
of the dilute contamination to ever accomplish.
The failure was likely the first incident with worldwide outrage. However, the
technical debate that was part of the aftermath of this failure was as unique as the degree
of public outcry in comparison with the actual damage to the environment. Following
extensive post-failure investigations, representatives of the original design consultant and
the post-incident Dam Review Team strongly disagreed on relatively basic engineering
issues involved in both the original design and the ultimate failure mechanism(s) (Haile,
1997 and Vick, 1997, respectively).
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Tailings Dam Failure Axiom - Tailings dam failures are a result of design and/or
construction/operation management flaws - not "acts of god".
As a positive corollary to the axiom, if the reasons for tailings dam failures are
readily identifiable, there is the potential to essentially eliminate such events with an
industry-wide commitment to correct design and stewardship practices. The necessary
knowledge exists; there just has to be used.
Concluding Remarks
Figure 1 presents a summary of sufficiently well documented "significant" tailings
th
dam failures over the 20 century. From the summarized information in Figure 1, two
possible trends are shown and are labeled A and B. Using Figure 1 as a barometer, what
is the likely future for tailings dam performance? Is the trend to be like A; either remaining
at roughly 2 or more significant failures per year with a gradual increase and perhaps also
having the occasional particularly "bad" decade (like the 1970's)? Alternatively, will the
trend of an apparent decrease in failures since the 1970's suggested by line B continue
into this new century?
An optimistic response, e.g. a B trend, is possible with a commitment from the
entire industry to an adherence to fundamentally sound design and operating concepts;
the authors are cautiously optimistic, as this commitment appears to be growing. The
optimism would be further increased if those in the industry who believe there has not
been a significant problem from tailings dam failures would take the time to review and
acknowledge the less than perfect history. These individuals should also understand that
the current scrutiny under which the industry currently finds itself is largely a result of this
history.
This conference is a unique event with the representation of owners, designers and
regulators. The authors suggest some minimum expectations for each of the four main
participants in the tailings dam life cycle to provide the best opportunity for an
improvement in the tailings dam performance record. These participants are:
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1.
2.
3.
4.
Owners
Designers
Regulators
Public individuals or collectives
Significant Tailings
Dam Failures
50
40
30
A
20
10
0
1909
1929
1949
1969
1989
2009
Date
Owners only retain design assistance from reputable designers with track records
that can be verified. Have submitted designs checked by independent professionals.
Give serious consideration to retaining third-party review as part of a periodic audit
process.
During operations, have a qualified person charged with tailings dam
stewardship and provide that individual with the authority to retain professional assistance
as deemed necessary. For older operations, be diligent in assessing the history of the
operation - look for forgotten "incidents" involving tailings dam management.
Designers do not work out of your area of competence and/or experience. This
includes not using off the shelf designs that may have been successful for you in the
past but are possibly woefully inappropriate for the climatic/tectonic/foundation conditions
for the project at hand. Welcome independent review - do not view such as an attack on
your design and/or competency but a benefit to you as much as your client.
Regulators - establish/maintain a database on all tailings dams, operating and
otherwise, within your jurisdiction. Maintain candid assessments of the performance
records of owners and designers and share such details with other regulators as
appropriate. Facilitate developments where the owner presents an independently
reviewed design that is consistent with standard design criteria. Work to repeal
regulations that are incompatible with common sense.
Public Participants - continue to expect responsible stewardship of the environment
by this necessary industry. However, acknowledge that the vast majority of mining
industry operators and operations deserve praise for their efforts. Concentrate on factual
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accounts of incidents to develop and maintain credibility. Avoid supporting nongovernment organizations that endorse actions against corporations committed to a high
degree of environmental stewardship and who operate their mines accordingly.
References
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