#tailing dams

[thoughtlessarse]

Mining’s toxic timebomb: dams full of poisonous waste are dotted around the world. What happens when they burst?

While tailings dams are meant to last for ever, extreme weather events are making many unstable – with devastating consequences for nature a

– with devastating consequences for nature and humans. As soon as the barrier broke, a flood of poison brought death to the river. Gushing through the fragile wall built to hold back mining waste in Zambia’s copper belt in February 2025, more than 50m cubic litres of acid and heavy metals poured into the Chambishi stream – a tributary of the Kafue River, the country’s longest waterway. Thousands of lifeless fish rose to the surface as a plume of acid floated downriver, leaving dead crocodiles and other wildlife in its wake. For the millions of Zambians that depend on the Kafue, the tailings dam collapse at the Chinese state-owned Sino-Metals Leach copper mine triggered a national environmental emergency that is yet to end. The spill shut down drinking water supplies for Kitwe, Zambia’s third-largest city, home to half a million people. Signs of pollution were detected 60 miles downstream from the collapse. Helicopters chased the spill downriver, dropping lime into the water in an attempt to neutralise its corrosive potency.-The affected region is home to rare wildlife, including the Kafue lechwe antelope, the Zambian barbet bird, and the wattled Crane. “It looked like diesel mixed with oil. We had already planted our crops, but they died. When you now turn up the soil to till it for planting, it has become yellowish and has a pungent smell,” says Mary Milimo, a 65-year-old smallholder close to where the Mwambashi River joins the Kafue. “There are no more fish here,” says Patrick Chindemwa, 66, who farms nearby. “I planted maize in October using irrigation. All the maize dried up. “The ground is yellow and soil here is like grease; it is slippery and when it rains, it melts. We need help,” he says. Sino-Metals did not respond to a request for comment. Almost a year later, the Kafue disaster has become yet another black mark against the mining industry and its long history of environmental disasters caused by poorly stored waste. Tailings dams – repositories of mining waste that is often toxic and stored under water – litter landscapes around the world. Often, they hold huge quantities of poisonous, harmful material.

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[wotfigo]

Toxic Sludge Tailing Dams Getting Bigger & Failing More Often Causing Massive Environmental & Fresh Water Damage. ______________________________________ The Risky Rise of the Dams From; http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-08-13/the-risky-rise-of-the-dams# ________________________________________ A massive mining wastewater spill in the interior of British Columbia highlights a new global trend: tailing dams that hold waste are not only getting bigger, but posing greater risks to watersheds and communities downstream.Drawing upon recent industry reports and presentations made by engineers living in the province, it's clear that the complexities of the industry have multiplied and with them, risks to water are escalating.Increased global mining production of substances such as iron ore, gold, copper and nickel along with rising metal prices has tripled the value of the industry from $200 billion to $600 billion over the last decade.But due to declining ore quality, the sheer volume of waste produced by the industry, which can contain substances such as arsenic, lead and cyanide, is increasing.Every year, the industry digs and moves as much solid rock (several thousand million tonnes per year) as all earthen materials transported by natural geological processes, such as landslides and erosion.Because of the challenge of peak metals and high global demand, the mining industry faces a number of somber risks, as reported by Andrew M. Robertson of Robertson GeoConsultants at a recent mining conference.It must not only dig deeper for poorer quality ores, but create larger and taller dams of tailings waste.As a result, the dykes that contain the waste have been growing higher and larger every year. The average height of a tailings dam has grown from 120 metres in the 1960s to 240 metres today. They also contain more water than ever before, reported Robertson.In addition, the growing size of mines means that the industry is "increasingly dominating regional water supply and quality. Our structures to control water have become large and threatening," reads Robertson'spresentation.Every 30 years, the volume of water and tailings produced by the industry increases tenfold, said Robertson. Meanwhile, the area of waste deposits increases fivefold and the height of dams grows twofold. "We are not dam building -- we are terraforming," he told a Tailings and Mine Waste conference in 2011.