recovery club, page-38

So many unanswered questions about tailings dam 4 failure:

1. Most tailings dams are designed to resist 1 in 10,000 year rain events & severe earthquake events.

2. Tailings dams are designed with under drains near the embankment so that pore pressure is reduced on the embankment and saturation of the embankment does not occur; a safety in design feature & failsafe feature.

3. Tailings dams are designed with spillways so they do not overflow; again embankment saturation should not occur even in a severe rain event (see point 1 severe rainfall event); a failsafe feature.

4. Decant ponds are designed for water balance; saturation of the embankment should not occur if decant pond water level is maintained to design specifications.

So how can a tailings dam fail?


a)It can fail by poor design; but there is no evidence of this put forward to shareholders.

b)It can fail by neglect, carelessness and or reckless act for instance by closing the under drain valves, by water level mis-management (decant pond) and spillway degradation. But the dam is inspected every day!


In short dams are designed not to fail. The facts at the moment; no action against designers so can count out design failure. Insurance; it has been 6 months but no sign of payment or even an update on the case. There is a failure report but it has not been released to shareholders; why have we been left in the dark to determine in our own minds what actually happened? RED could put an end to speculation by releasing the TS4 failure report before the GM.

So from the above how can the dam fail? It can't fail but it did. The only conclusion I can come up with (from the points stated above) was failure by some other cause. But what other cause is there? Listed below are the only causes I can think of; however I can only think of two (I will only give one as the other reason would require a court of law to prove).

1. Possible neglect, careless and or reckless act; in proper maintenance, in proper operating procedure and or in proper due diligence.

2. Court of law required to prove (reason for not stating as I would be moderated or banned from HC).


Does this seem like the situation we are in at the moment?
I am leaning in my own mind only towards point 2; my reason; a wall of silence about the TS4 dam failure.