Within the frame of the CIM Tailings Workshop Series pre-workshop comments participants were asked three questions aiming at “feeding” the discussions. Below are the three questions and our “short” replies. What is a tailings system? From a physical point of view, not in order of importance: start at the pumps in the mill, pipelines, spigots, dam(s), all water management ancillary facilities (including diversions, decants, spillways), roadway at the crown, seepage collection facilities, decant raft and pipes, monitoring, investigations and testing…
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The proposal for a mine waste classification system recently described by Ljiljana Josic and Lawrence Devon Smith fills a blatant (and often costly) gap in the industry standards. Factors like management, legislation and permitting of mining wastes have become driving forces in decisions. NI43-101 and other public disclosure requirements will further boost all related issues. The need for unified and univocal glossary and unequivocal definitions is of course of primary importance. The same occurs in risk management. A proposal for…
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Ethics in mining, oil and other natural resources fields We participated in a debate on ethics in mining at CIM 2015 (Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum). It was stated that more than any other industry, mining requires holistic approaches because impacts are indeed holistic. Interesting to note that when discussing about ethics everyone seems to accept the idea of holistic impacts, yet nobody objects to common practice risk assessments that most of the time censor and bias impacts…
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