South America accounts for over 20% of the global number of tailings dams, and there have been two cases of dams failure in the last five years. With their abundance of local natural resources, Latin American nations should not have pollutive tailings dams.
When tailings dams fail, they spill contaminated earth laced with toxic mercury and/or cyanide into rivers and lakes which have fragile ecosystems. Most recently, on the 25th of January 2019, the Brumandinho Dam failed, bringing about huge devastation to the state of Minas Gerais. Public anger has escalated over the safety and continued existence of tailings dams.
Since the disaster, Brazil has implemented strict guidelines to ensure the safety of its people. To limit the potential of dam failure, the National Mining Agency in Brazil has announced a ban on upstream dams and a mandatory decommissioning of such dams by 2021. Furthermore, increasingly rigorous inspections of existing dams will be conducted in the years ahead.
As more countries enforce stricter environmental standards on mining operations, mining companies will likely face an increasing risk of mining operations curtailment. To avoid tailings dams failures, alternative solutions need to be deployed to ensure the safety of miners, the community and the environment.
Clean Earth Technologies has a solution to eradicate the need for tailings dams completely. Using an award-winning non-toxic gold recovery agent, mining operations will no longer create a toxic impact. In addition, our processes also allow for remediating mercury contamination. With Clean Earth Technologies’ gold recovery agent and dewatering process, clean mining operations can occur with assurances of safety and sustainability to the community, environment and economy.
