Tailings and Mine Waste Conference

Balabag Tailings Storage Facility : Successful Construction Monitoring and Supervision Daliri, Farzad; Longey, Rob; Brett, David; James, Cliff

Abstract

The Balabag Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) is a 80 m high zoned earth and rockfill embankment with a central clay core transitioning to upstream for Stage 2 with filter drains. The tailings dam has been raised in three stages, first with a starter dam to crest RL442.5 (stage 1), and then to stage 2 RL465 and stage 3 RL482 by the downstream construction method. Several construction monitoring technologies and instrumentation methods have been used to provide better supervision and monitor the construction stages, including vibrating wire piezometers, settlement monitoring points, bathymetric surveys, and drone videos. Drone video has been used successfully for weekly surveillance of the TSF as part of an overall technical review role for the project. The construction monitoring role included full-time technical support by in-country personnel, with an annual in-person field inspection by senior personnel from Australia and Canada. The bathymetric survey included the impoundment survey presenting the tailings level, pond water level, tailings volume and longitudinal cross-sections providing the tailings pond profile and tailings beach slopes. This paper reviews the construction supervision, monitoring technologies, and the organization used to monitor the Balabag TSF construction stages, as an example of a successful supervision of a challenging Extreme consequence category tailings dam in a remote area.

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Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International