Tailings Dam is a reservoir intended to retain solid waste and water resulting from ore beneficiation processes. Storage of these wastes is necessary to avoid environmental damage.
The monitoring of heavy metals in underground waters is the most important part of the monitoring site of waste deposits in mines.
In the vicinity of the deposit, these deposits should be dug explored wells and continuous control of heavy metals.
On the other hand, surface waters should be controlled.
Proper design, maintenance and controls to prevent overflow and failure. This is a very large document on designing and operating small dams. If hazardous wastes, sealing dam to prevent groundwater contamination, some dredging and removal may also be needed. A licensed civil engineer would help with design and liability issues. Various types of monitoring may be needed. If containment is required for hazardous materials or to prevent environmental and public damage, the storage capacity may need to design for not only tailings, but also any streamflow and stormflow from contributing areas, using perhaps a 100 year stormflow estimate. If there are to be Wastewater discharges, what water treatments should be undertaken or other mitigations needs to be included. These facilities need careful management. I would also suggest a sufficient performance bond set in case of poor management, bankrupcy or abandonment, to cover waste and dam removal, decommissioning damages and restoring to an acceptable use.
https://www.usbr.gov/tsc/techreferences/mands/mands-pdfs/SmallDams.pdf
We are currently carrying out a project calledMm inimising the risk of tailings dams failures through the use of remote sensing data see: https://tailingsdams.info/ This report here may be of help to you: https://tailingsdams.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/BE-090-Tailings-dams-R1-Secured.pdf
Technical Report Reclamation of Mine Regions at Bisgod: Approaches and Challenges
Tailings are the waste products from mining. Mechanical and chemical processes are used to grind up rock into a fine sand to extract the valuable mineral or metal from the rock ore. All the unrecoverable and uneconomic remnants from this process are waste. They include finely ground rock particles, chemicals, minerals and water. Depending on the type of mining, tailings can be liquid, solid or a slurry of fine particles. Many substances found in tailings are toxic, even radioactive, and it’s not uncommon to find large amounts of cyanide, mercury and arsenic in tailings.
Assessment and evaluation of trace metals in groundwater aquifers.
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