Comments on: Oil Sand Tailings Conference coda and mining ERCB regulations for meaning http://ithinkmining.com/2008/12/12/oil-sand-tailings-conference-coda-and-mining-ercb-regulations-for-meaning/ Sharp opinions about mines and mining from Jack Caldwell Thu, 31 May 2012 02:57:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Fred Williams http://ithinkmining.com/2008/12/12/oil-sand-tailings-conference-coda-and-mining-ercb-regulations-for-meaning/#comment-892 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:29:11 +0000 http://ithink.mining.com/?p=1418#comment-892 Maybe I’m confused but you say the objective of the strength criteria is to prevent the flow of tailings down the river. I suggest that this is not the case. The objective is to create a trafficable surface that can support mobile equipment so that topsoils and reclamation can proceeed to restore the land surface. Most of the tailings eventually produced will be stored in inpit cells and hence won’t be flowing anywhere. The objective is simply to allow reclamation of the surface and as far as I know (and I could be mistaken) not one tailings pond surface has been reclaimed to date mainly due to the untrafficable surface. I suggest the ERCB is tired of hearing about the concepts but not seeing any results, in other words “put up or shut up”.

The proposed “fluid tailings reduction” scheme, i.e. combining coase sand stream and fine tailings streams, only happens when placing tailings back inpit so I don’t think this regulation would impact the out of pit tailings ponds at all.

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