Contribution to the increase of the hydrological safety of tailings dams

Abstract

The tailings dams are created by deposition of tailings from the flotation process in the mines. On one hand, the tailings dams fall into the category of civil engineering structures with highest potential risk for the downstream river valley. On the other hand, mining is one of the most important industrial branches worldwide, which means that tailings dams will be present in the future. Tailings dams are complex hydraulic structures that should be checked for the following types of safety: hydrological, seepage, static, seismic, ecological, sociological and economical. The hydrological safety should be provided in the exploitation stage (by using variable reserved storage in the lake) and in the post-exploitation stage (by applying permanent spillway structure). A routine approach is not applicable to verify the hydrologic safety. Instead, the assessment should be adjusted to the tailings dam concept and the flood criterion. The purpose of this paper is to systemize the knowledge gained by researching for an increase of the hydrological safety of the tailings dam Sasa, M. Kamenica, Republic of Macedonia. The specified tailings facility is a cascade system composed of five tailings dams, and the hydrological safety refers to the evacuation of the flood water of Petrova River.