84
7 Let’s Start with Some Serious “Do Nots”!
While having a safe dam may be a noble objective, having a design or operating
management plan declared safe is misleading to the public and to those who have to
make decisions related to the integrity of individual tailings management facilities.
We will now discuss several points related to the “safety” discussion.
7.2 Do Not Accept Incremental Answers
The design, construction, operation and closure of any tailings dam is carried out
within a complex system requiring high levels of expertise, commitment and diligence. A mining company, which must accept ultimate responsibility, will generally
retain professional consultants to assist them in meeting their responsibilities and
may rely on the regulatory system to add rigor through government permitting and
compliance responsibilities.
Whatever the situation, a complex relationship exists between mining companies,
regulators and consultants with regard to ensuring that the highest standards of tailings dam design and management are identified and implemented. Many individual
elements have to come together within a system that examines the interrelated nature
of the activities that each must perform in meeting their respective responsibilities.
For the purposes of this book, this integrated relationship will be called the Tailings
Responsibility Framework (TRF).
Recent dam failures discussed in Part I (Chaps. 2 and 3) have led to the identification of incremental improvements in the design, management and regulation
of tailings dams that should be adopted on a global basis to reduce the likelihood
and consequences of future catastrophic failures. However, the mining industry must
move beyond the incremental answers provided by the narrow “accident investigation” approach and use advanced risk assessment methodologies to identify the
gaps, hidden flaws or hazards that have been created within existing TRFs that could
contribute to future catastrophic failures.
7.3 Do Not Call Unforeseeable What Indeed Is Foreseeable
The immediate response to a dam failure is generally to call for an investigation to
determine the cause of the failure. The cause is then established by expert consensus and generally described as a geotechnical/hydrogeological/hydraulic/structural
failure of some parts of the dam system. It may then be traced back to a hazard that
created a fatal flaw in the design, an operating practice that caused the integrity of the
design to be compromised and/or the failure of government to enforce the conditions
of its operating permit. A dam failure may be triggered by a particular natural or
man-made event or action but the root cause of failure is not what happened at the
moment. The root cause is what decisions were made that let that hazardous situation
exist in the first place. In the case of a particular hazard or a combination of hazards,
7 Let’s Start with Some Serious “Do Nots”!
While having a safe dam may be a noble objective, having a design or operating
management plan declared safe is misleading to the public and to those who have to
make decisions related to the integrity of individual tailings management facilities.
We will now discuss several points related to the “safety” discussion.
7.2 Do Not Accept Incremental Answers
The design, construction, operation and closure of any tailings dam is carried out
within a complex system requiring high levels of expertise, commitment and diligence. A mining company, which must accept ultimate responsibility, will generally
retain professional consultants to assist them in meeting their responsibilities and
may rely on the regulatory system to add rigor through government permitting and
compliance responsibilities.
Whatever the situation, a complex relationship exists between mining companies,
regulators and consultants with regard to ensuring that the highest standards of tailings dam design and management are identified and implemented. Many individual
elements have to come together within a system that examines the interrelated nature
of the activities that each must perform in meeting their respective responsibilities.
For the purposes of this book, this integrated relationship will be called the Tailings
Responsibility Framework (TRF).
Recent dam failures discussed in Part I (Chaps. 2 and 3) have led to the identification of incremental improvements in the design, management and regulation
of tailings dams that should be adopted on a global basis to reduce the likelihood
and consequences of future catastrophic failures. However, the mining industry must
move beyond the incremental answers provided by the narrow “accident investigation” approach and use advanced risk assessment methodologies to identify the
gaps, hidden flaws or hazards that have been created within existing TRFs that could
contribute to future catastrophic failures.
7.3 Do Not Call Unforeseeable What Indeed Is Foreseeable
The immediate response to a dam failure is generally to call for an investigation to
determine the cause of the failure. The cause is then established by expert consensus and generally described as a geotechnical/hydrogeological/hydraulic/structural
failure of some parts of the dam system. It may then be traced back to a hazard that
created a fatal flaw in the design, an operating practice that caused the integrity of the
design to be compromised and/or the failure of government to enforce the conditions
of its operating permit. A dam failure may be triggered by a particular natural or
man-made event or action but the root cause of failure is not what happened at the
moment. The root cause is what decisions were made that let that hazardous situation
exist in the first place. In the case of a particular hazard or a combination of hazards,