24
Geotechnical News •June 2015
WASTE GEOTECHNICS
The Value of Failure
G. Ward Wilson
Andrew MacG. Robertson
A breach occurred within the perim-
eter embankment of the Mount Polley
Tailings Storage Facility on August
4, 2014. The loss of containment was
sudden and occurred without warning.
An Independent Expert Engineer-
ing Investigation and Review Panel
(IEEIRP or panel) was quickly com-
missioned by the British Columbia
Ministry of Energy and Mines. The
IEEIRP consisting of Norbert Morgen-
stern (Chair), Stephen Vick, and Dirk
van Zyl released their report on the
Mount Polley Tailings Storage Facility
Breach on January 30, 2015.
The media and public interests
Reactions in the media were as
expected with statements such as those
of Steven Hume at the Vancouver Sun
who on February 11, 2015, wrote, “It
is now pretty clear what happened
at Mount Polley leading up to the
dam bursting last August and spilling
24,000,000 m³ of toxic mine tailings,
silt and waste water into the Ques-
nel, and ultimately the Fraser River
systems, potentially putting thousands
of people and millions of migrating
salmon at risk”. No matter how the-
atrical and spectacular we think such
reports are, they capture the paradigm
of the culture within which we must
operate and ultimately obtain social
license.
Fortunately, no loss of life occurred
as a result of the release and since the
quality of the water that was released
was actually quite good, the size of
the fish kill was much smaller than
the proclamation above would have
us believe.Nevertheless we must
recognize the serious implications of
the event at Mount Polley as it is one
of the most significant event in the
professional and corporate memories
for many of us engaged in the busi-
ness of mine waste management.
While it is an event we consider to be
of extremely high consequences, it
may well be a blessing in disguise. It
could have been much worse in terms
of loss of life, environmental damage
and financial cost if the event occurred
at another site. There are a number of
significant tailings impoundments in
close proximity to large urban Cana-
dian populations. We recall the failure
that occurred in 2012 at the bauxite
mine at Kolontar, Hungary, that inun-
dated several towns, killed ten people
and flooded more than 8 km
2
of the
surrounding terrain.
Possibly the greatest lasting conse-
quence of this failure is the breach in
trust that has occurred in the reliability
of modern tailings dams constructed
by responsible companies in a well
regulated jurisdiction, under condi-
tions which were not extreme. Perhaps
the greatest benefit that can come from
this is the great and lasting change that
is occurring in the mining industry
world wide, as engineers responsible
for the design and operation of tailings
dams, and the corporate and regulatory
leaders responsible for the governance
of such structures, recognize their
fallibility and strengthen the processes
needed to ensure that they are not
contributors to the next failure.
The Province of Alberta has some of
the largest tailings dams in the world.
In his keynote address to the Tailings
and Mine Waste 2010 Conference del-
egates in Vale, Colorado, Dr. Morgen-
stern stated that Syncrude’s out-of-pit
tailings pond has a perimeter of about
Greens Creek filtered tailings stack showing drainage capping and
progressive reclamation.
