Tailings Dam Safety - Implications for the Dam Safety Community

The technology of mine tailings dams has always been largely separate from that for conventional water-retention dams. Although the two types of structures share many common analytical techniques, different traditions for both design and dam safety activities have developed within the mining industry as compared to hydroelectric and related areas of dam engineering. Some of these differences are firmly rooted in the different characteristics of the structures and the nature of the contents their impoundments retain. Nevertheless, recent trends in tailings dam safety have wider implications for the larger dam safety community and the issues that promise to confront it in the future.
Resource extraction has long been important to Canada. The Mining Association of Canada reports that mining directly or indirectly provides 700,000 Canadian jobs and primary support for some 150 communities. Even as the prospects for major new hydroelectric projects appear limited, there is every reason to expect that the development of new mines in Canada and the tailings dams they require will continue, and that the importance of tailings dams to the dam safety community will grow in proportion.