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British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium

Managing for closure at the Myra Falls Operation : the design of a soil cover system for long term ecological and physical stability O'Kane, Mike; Mchaina, David Mhina; Stoicescu, Jeffrey; Januszewski, Steve; Haug, Moir D.; Bews, Brenda E.

Abstract

Westmin's Myra Falls Operations has the one single largest environmental problem facing the mining industry today. The tailings and waste rock materials are acid generating. A review of existing literature indicates that there are a number of technologies that can be used and developed for the prevention and control of acid generation in sulphidic mine tailings and waste rock. The majority of the ARD control technologies are centered around the curtailment of oxygen and water to the waste material. The most promising technology for Westmin's Myra Falls Operations is engineered soil covers. An initial cover design evaluation using local till materials indicated that the materials were not suitable for the proposed application. However, the soils were modified with a selection of amendments and the laboratory results showed significant improvements. The results suggest that local till materials amended with either flyash or bentonite can be used in soil cover construction. Westmin intends to conduct field trials to evaluate the performance of a short list of soil cover variations to determine the final cover system design as a result of the encouraging laboratory and soil-atmosphere modelling results. This paper summarizes the results of the laboratory characterization of the potential cover and waste materials and presents the soil-atmosphere numerical modelling used to design the field test plots. Construction aspects, instrumentation, vegetation, two-dimensional flow and in general the scope of the project will be briefly discussed. The successful use of local till material ameliorated with a fine grained material will provide a positive impact to the mining industry. This application to the design of soil cover systems is a novel approach which offers an economic alternative for decommissioning smaller waste rock piles and tailings management facilities.

Item Metadata

Title
Managing for closure at the Myra Falls Operation : the design of a soil cover system for long term ecological and physical stability
Creator
O'Kane, Mike; Mchaina, David Mhina; Stoicescu, Jeffrey; Januszewski, Steve; Haug, Moir D.; Bews, Brenda E.
Contributor
British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium; University of British Columbia. Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering
Date Issued
1997
Description
Westmin's Myra Falls Operations has the one single largest environmental problem facing the mining industry today. The tailings and waste rock materials are acid generating. A review of existing literature indicates that there are a number of technologies that can be used and developed for the prevention and control of acid generation in sulphidic mine tailings and waste rock. The majority of the ARD control technologies are centered around the curtailment of oxygen and water to the waste material. The most promising technology for Westmin's Myra Falls Operations is engineered soil covers. An initial cover design evaluation using local till materials indicated that the materials were not suitable for the proposed application. However, the soils were modified with a selection of amendments and the laboratory results showed significant improvements. The results suggest that local till materials amended with either flyash or bentonite can be used in soil cover construction. Westmin intends to conduct field trials to evaluate the performance of a short list of soil cover variations to determine the final cover system design as a result of the encouraging laboratory and soil-atmosphere modelling results. This paper summarizes the results of the laboratory characterization of the potential cover and waste materials and presents the soil-atmosphere numerical modelling used to design the field test plots. Construction aspects, instrumentation, vegetation, two-dimensional flow and in general the scope of the project will be briefly discussed. The successful use of local till material ameliorated with a fine grained material will provide a positive impact to the mining industry. This application to the design of soil cover systems is a novel approach which offers an economic alternative for decommissioning smaller waste rock piles and tailings management facilities.
Extent
458572 bytes
Genre
Conference Paper
Type
Text
File Format
application/pdf
Language
eng
Date Available
2009-06-30
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0042312
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9875
Affiliation
Non UBC
Peer Review Status
Unreviewed
Scholarly Level
Other
Copyright Holder
British Columbia Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International