Mine Tailings Storage: Safety Is No Accident

Case study: Marinduque, Philippines, 1996

In 1996, Marcopper Mining Corporation, 39.9 per cent owned by Canadian Placer Dome, began mining the Mount Tapian copper- gold deposit on the island of Marinduque in the Philippines. By 1990 the mine was exhausted and the company opened a second site at San Antonio, three kilometres away. Following a failed attempt to obtain permission to dispose of tailings directly into the sea, the company was granted a 10-year certificate to deposit tailings into the mined-out Tapian Pit. Tunnels that had previously been used to drain the pit were sealed with concrete to contain the tailings. On 24 March 1996, after four years of tailings disposal into the Tapian Pit, the plug in the drainage tunnel leading to the Boac River gave way, resulting in one of the most catastrophic mining disasters in history (Figure 13). Three to four million tons of metal-enriched and acid-generating tailings were discharged into the 26-kilometre-long Boac River, flooding villages and agricultural land. An investigative team from the United Nations visited the island shortly after the tailings spill and noted: “… it is unclear why an environmental impact assessment of the Tapian Pit option was never carried out; why no apparent efforts had been made to find an alternative disposal method and site … why no monitoring of the portal area was being carried out even though it was reported to the U.N. Mission that the mine tailings had been escaping in some quantity for a considerable period of time. The unconventional use of the Tapian Pit as a containment system for tailings, particularly because of the presence of a disused drainage tunnel near its bottom, should have been sufficient to ensure that risk assessment and contingency

planning were carried out. Furthermore, it is clear from cross- sectional diagrams of the drainage tunnel that were reviewed at the mine site that fracture zones and ground water seepage were likely to occur along its length.” (UNEP 1996). The United Nations team noticed unrelated leaks in other mine structures and concluded, “it is evident that environmental management was not a high priority for Marcopper” (UNEP 1996). Placer Dome divested from Marcopper a year after the spill and consistently denied responsibility for the disaster, blaming it instead on a small earthquake that happened a week before the collapse (Coumans 1999). Initially, the company pledged to clean up the Boac River, but this has not been achieved and a large quantity of tailings remain in the river system (Macdonald and Southall 2005). The Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources has rejected the proposed clean-up methods, due to concerns about additional environmental and safety issues. The companies involved have paid no compensation, although two years after the disaster, communities impacted along the Boac River had received a total of 21.6 million pesos (approximately $426 000) from the government’s Environmental Guarantee Fund – this equates to around $124 per household (Bennagen 1998). The Boac River was essentially destroyed by the spill, which resulted in the complete loss of river-based sources of livelihood. The few environmental studies of the river that have been carried out suggest there will likely be ongoing acid leaching of heavy metal from the tailings, which will continue to contaminate the river (Taylor 1999; USGS 2000).

Cross section of Tapian Pit

29.9 k/cm 2 WATER PRESSURE

300 m

Collapsed tunnel portal

Rock

30 m

2.5 km

Concrete plug installed before tailings placed in pit

7.5 k/cm 2

Tailings (saturated)

PRESSURE IN THE GROUND

L ÓPEZ , 2017

Source: Dumbar S, 2012, Basics of Mining and Mineral Processing, Americas School of Mines.

Figure 13. Illustration of the Tapian pit

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