Sally Petaske, David Sego, Moh’d Alostaz, and Nicholas Beier of the University of Alberta Geotechnical Center and Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility deserve accolades for an incredibly well organized and managed conference, namely the Tailings and Mine Waste ’09 Conference recently held in Banff, Alberta. Without hesitation I record that is it the best organized conference I have ever attended. Period.
An even better reason to give them thanks is that they produced a superb volume of the papers, and even more significantly have made available on their website all the PowerPoint presentations from the conference. This decision to post the presentation overheads (to use an old-fashioned word) is a fine decision and one that is in the best interests of the industry and all who are involved in and interested in tailings.
(By way of full disclosure, I had a few presentations and am of course pleased that they are now readily available to all whether they attended the conference or not.)
You may have to purchase the volume of proceedings to get all the information, but who of us has time to read all 900 pages of technical papers? How much better to be able to scan the presentations for fast general interest and then to select those of interest to you specifically. At that point you could contact the authors who would, I am sure, be happy to talk to you and send you a copy of their paper if you asked. Or consult to you if they could help you.
I must recommend that you take a look at the presentation by Gord McKenna of BGC – the file is large so be patient as it downloads—the wait is worth it. As always his is a superb presentation–a model we should all seek to emulate. But more: his topic, Techniques for creating mining landforms with a natural appearance, is significant and his take informed and intelligent.
For the rest brows at your leisure and enjoy.
