Here’s the release from UN Environment:
Mining Tailings Storage: Safety is no accident, was prompted by tailings dams disasters and rising global concerns about the safety, management and impacts of storing and managing large volumes of mine tailings.
The increasing number and size of tailings dams around the globe magnifies the potential environmental, social and economic cost of catastrophic failure impact and the risks and costs of perpetual management. These risks present a challenge for this generation, and if not addressed now, a debt we will leave to future generations.
From the Associated Press (Matthew Brown) via The Denver Post:
The UN Environment Program report tallied 40 significant mine waste accidents in the past decade. Most involved dams or other storage areas that failed, releasing torrents of polluted water.
Among the accidents highlighted by the agency were a 2015 dam collapse at a Brazilian iron-ore mine that killed 19 people and the Gold King Mine disaster in the U.S. that spilled pollution into rivers in three Western states.
Although the rate of such accidents has been falling, the report warned that the consequences have grown more serious as waste impoundments get larger. The iron-ore mine accident in Samarco, Brazil, for example, released some 40 million cubic meters (52 million cubic yards) of waste that polluted hundreds of miles of rivers and streams.
The UNEP recommended governments and mining companies adopt a “zero-failure” goal for mining impoundments known as tailings dams and impose stronger regulations.
There are an estimated 30,000 industrial mines worldwide and hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines that continue spewing pollution for decades after they’ve closed.
Advocacy groups said in response to this week’s UNEP report that 341 people have been killed by mine waste accidents since 2008.
Waste storage sites are “like ticking time bombs,” said Payal Sampat with the U.S.-based group Earthworks, adding that governments and the mining industry have done too little to prevent accidents.
