The awareness to tailings dam safety monitoring and reviews has increased by the
catastrophes resulting from failures of such dams worsened by increasing tailings
waste and construction of larger dams. The losses born by the mining industry from
high costs of compensations and environmental rehabilitation work have brought
this matter into focus. In the present article the need for safety monitoring programs
of tailings dam is highlighted and mode of failures and factors leading to them are
described. Basic principles of such programs are investigated with all phenomena
needing observation described and their impacts explained. As in conventional
dams this work is carried out by visual inspections and use of similar methods and
instruments. In similar manners in both types of dams’ observation and
measurements are done for measuring seepage water quantity and quality, phreatic
surface level and pore pressure and total earth pressure values in addition to
deformation measurements; and all are done by similar devices and methods such
as weirs, piezometers, inclinometers, settlement plates and geodetic surveying.
Basic differences between safety monitoring systems of the two types of dam,
however, are presented in a tabular form. The continuity of safety monitoring of
tailings dams is emphasized not only during the long construction phase but also
after that in the abandonment and closure phase which can last indefinitely in order
to watch for possible adverse effects on the environment and ecosystem due to the
winds eroding and carrying of poisonous tailings contents, in addition to contaminated seepage water entering surface water streams and ground water.
Justifications for using real time monitoring systems for recording and transmitting
all data to the control center are presented with emphasis given on savings in both
labor and time and need for the discovery of warning signs enabling raising earlier
the alarm of possible failure or incident and the early taking of preventive measures.
In this article it is argued that, in spite of the large investment of installing and
running cost of comprehensive dam safety monitoring systems in tailings dams,
such costs are justified as they form only a small percentage of the total investment
in the tailings facilities projects, and may save huge costs if failure does happen.
Such systems may be considered as an additional insurance against such events.
Dam Safety: Monitoring of Tailings Dams and Safety Reviews
