Mining Impacts · impact
Riverine tailings disposal
Water · During operation
- Category
- Water
- Timescale
- During operation
Mitigation
Now rejected by most regulators and lenders in favour of engineered storage; where it has happened, remediation means dredging and long-term floodplain monitoring.
Case
The Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea discharged to the Fly River system for decades, with sediment aggrading the bed and killing floodplain forest well over 100 km downstream.
Mechanism
Where terrain or seismicity makes a dam impractical, some operations have discharged tailings straight into a river system. The load buries the bed, raises it until the river breaks its banks, and spreads fine sediment and metals over the floodplain far downstream.
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