4 corners, page-45

Paulc...

The base problematical decision seems to have been to make the main containing wall in the Tailings Dam higher to accommodate a higher production level, which would undoubtedly have a causative commercial outcome dimension.

The engineering ramifications of this, may have been communicated, but may not have been appreciated in engineering or commercial terms.

Can you imagine (briefly) a company building a Tailings dam in a valley, where the bedrock is a limestone, and tailings ph about 1....well it happened, ... and 3 m litres of toxic fluid went into the cavernous limestone...and no one knows where this is now.

And this was not the only case like this that I have directly came across.

There are several levels of human failure, but until the mining industry gets serious about tailings dams, this will repeat. And the regulators...well they need some funds, like the regulators in most developing countries..another sad dimension to the story

"The dam burst revealed a series of mistakes by underfunded mining and environmental regulators in one of the world's top iron-ore producer, triggering a debate over harsher mining controls in Congress.Brazilian police in the state of Minas Gerais last week accused six Samarco executives and one contractor of murder in connection with the deaths caused by the dam spill. -"