USGS releases first study to assess global earthquake risk to mineral supplies
Earthquakes have the potential to substantially affect mining operations, leading to supply chain disruptions that adversely affect the global economy.
Editor John Cumming of the Northern Miner lit into Imperial Metals after Mount Polley, comparing it to past mining fiascos.
The complete failure of the tailings dam at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley copper–gold mine in Central B.C.’s Cariboo region on Aug. 4 is the most depressing thing to have happened in Canadian mining since the Bre-X Minerals debacle in 1997. It’s the worst tailings dam failure tied to a Canadian company since the Los Frailes disaster in Spain in 1998 (5 million cubic metres spilled) and the Omai spill in Guyana in 1995 (2.3 million cubic metres spilled).
The Vancouver Sun’s Barbara Yaffee writes that the disaster couldn’t come at a worse time with the salmon starting to spawn and a proposed pipeline in the mix.
[This] environmental catastrophe is bound to have a chilling effect on those in B.C. who otherwise might have been open to being convinced that — should Enbridge comply with the province’s five conditions and the 209 imposed by a federal review panel — well, maybe the job-generating Northern Gateway project would be worth the presumably diminished risk.
Jack Caldwell says wait for the results from any independent board that investigates the incident. What will be found is probably a chain of failure:
Standard accident theory tells us that an accident occurs when many small incidents or omissions line up. It is like a pile of Swiss cheese with hole in it: inevitably a pile of cheese with hole in it will result where holes line up and you could poke a knitting needle through the holes without penetrating the cheese.
So I believe that even an independent board of experts will be forced to find as I write above, with more detail of course. It is inevitable they will find all in the chain at fault. And they will conclude it is yet another example of the basic rule: sometimes ten small faults or omission line up and the result is disaster.
3 Comments
Thomas
So a tailings failure due to unknown causes at this time that will likely cripple a company that did not want to be crippled is just like Bre-X?
This guy knows the story with Bre-X right?
William Thompson
I’ve seen it before and it will happen again. Incompetent management do not take tailing dams seriously enough to plan ahead. Often changes in site management puts other irons in the fire forgetting what was recommended a year ago. Approvals for upgrades and piles of paperwork that very few people read until there is a botch up. Approvals are also delayed by governments and anyone else that feels he or she has a right to interfere.
digger
When I was watching the helicopter video, you could see that there was a longstanding problem with the dam, probably leaking for awhile. There looks like two catchment ponds at the toe of the dam just to the right of where it failed. Two black lines (pipelines) were running up the outside of the dam they came to the top of the dam and there is a “hump” in the road where the lines run back into the dam where trucks could drive over.
If it was leaking into those ponds then the company would have had to get governmental approval to do that. I have worked at several mines , and the ones with leaking dams, put collection ditches and pump it back into the ponds with government approval.
Mining companies strive to meet/exceed their operating licenses, it is the government officials that allow for the changes, they set the standards and should be responsible
Giant Yellowknife is a perfect example of this. In order to keep people employed the government allowed giant to blow the arsenic underground and now it is a environmental hazard, is it Giant’s fault or the NWT government, same deal at Mount Polly it is the government’s fault