title: Reported tailings dam failures. A review of the European incidents in the worldwide context.
abstract: A detailed search and re-evaluation of the known historical cases of tailings dam failure was carried out. A corpus of 147 cases of worldwide tailings dam disasters, from which 26 located in Europe, was compiled in a database. This contains six sections, including dam location, its physical and constructive characteristics, actual and putative failure cause, sludge hydrodynamics, socio-economical consequences and environmental impacts. Europe ranks in second place in reported accidents (18%), more than one third of them in dams 10-20 m high. In Europe, the most common cause of failure is related to unusual rain, whereas there is a lack of occurrences associated with seismic liquefaction, which is the second cause of tailings dam breakage elsewhere in the world. Moreover, over 90% of incidents occurred in active mines, and only 10% refer to abandoned ponds. The results reached by this preliminary analysis show an urgent need for EU regulations regarding technical standards of tailings disposal.
authors.affiliation: CSIC-Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología, Zaragoza, Spain. mayterico@ipe.csic.es
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rico
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Benito
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Salgueiro
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Díez-Herrero
authors.forename: H G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Pereira
mesh_terms: D004190:Disasters / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005060:Europe; D007220:Industrial Waste; D008906:Mining
chemical_list: D007220:Industrial Waste