Floods from tailings dam failures

Rico, M.1, Benito2, G., Díez-Herrero, A.3

1
CSIC – Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología, Zaragoza, Spain
2
CSIC – Centro de Ciencias Medioambientales, Madrid, Spain
3
Geological Hazards Unit, Spanish Geological Survey (IGME), Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT

This paper compiles the available information on historic tailings dam failures with the
purpose to establish simple correlations between tailings ponds geometric parameters
(e.g. dam height, tailings volume) and the hydraulic characteristics of floods resulting
from released tailings. Following the collapse of a mining waste dam, only a part of
tailings and polluted water stored at the dam is released, and this outflow volume is
difficult to estimate prior the incident. In this study, tailings’ volume stored at the time
of failure was shown to have a good correlation (r2 = 0.86) with the tailings outflow
volume, and the volume of spilled tailings was correlated with its run-out distance (r2 =
0.57). An envelope curve was drawn encompassing the majority of data points
indicating the potential maximum downstream distance affected by a tailings’ spill. The
application of the described regression equations for prediction purposes needs to be
treated with caution and with support of on-site measurement and observations.
However, they may provide a universal baseline approximation on tailing outflow
characteristics (even if detailed dam information is unavailable), which is of a great
importance for risk analysis purposes.

Key words: tailings pond, mine waste, dam failure, dam break, risk analysis

1
1. INTRODUCTION
Dams are structural barriers built mainly for water management (for example irrigation,
hydroelectric power and/or flood control) or the storage of industrial and mineral
processing waste. Tailings dams are a particular type of dam built to store mill and
waste tailings from mining activities. Currently, thousands of tailings dams worldwide
contain billions of tonnes of waste material from mineral processing activity at mine
sites. A number of particular characteristics make tailings dams more vulnerable to
failure than water storage dams, namely: (1) embankments formed by locally derived
fills (soil, coarse waste, overburden from mining operations and tailings); (2) multi-
stage raising of the dam to cope with the increase in solid material stored and effluent
(plus runoff from precipitation) released; (3) the lack of regulations on specific design
criteria; (4) dam stability requiring a continuous monitoring and control during
emplacement, construction and operation of the dam; and (5) the high cost of
remediation works following the closure of mining activities.

Ever since the earliest dams were built, there have been dam failures. However, most
studies of dam-break floods have focused on water-storage dams, with only a few
exceptions [1,2,3,4]. Tailings dam failures result from a variety of causal mechanisms
(e.g. flooding, piping, overtopping, liquefaction, or a combination of several) spilling
out polluted water and tailings with a variety of textural and physical-chemical
properties, which may impact over the downstream socio-economic activities and
ecological systems. A good example of the high socio-economic cost associated with
tailings dam disasters is the Los Frailes (Aznalcollar) accident, a large scale sulphide
tailings pond spill that occurred in April 1998, with ca. €152 million in socio-economic
losses [5,6,7]. About €147 million was spent to correct the negative environmental and
agricultural impacts, including restoration of the area’s natural resources (average
impact of 5.7x106 €/km2) and ca. €5 million was dedicated to mitigate socio-economic
and socio-labour impacts in the affected municipalities. In addition, uncountable
impacts affected the region’s production structure which produced a drop in sales from
milk producers, farmers and fish industries.

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To date, most numerical models for dam break analysis have been developed for water-
storage dams. The purpose of these models has been to predict the flood characteristics
(flood hydrograph, peak discharge, flood wave propagation time, etc.), this depending
upon dam type (for example, earth, rockfill, concrete gravity, concrete arch etc), break
mechanisms and breach size. A great effort is still needed, however, to establish a
reliable general methodology for coping with hazard prediction from tailings dam
failures, which may serve to classify tailings ponds according to their potential
downstream damages. In tailings dam accidents, flow numerical models need to account
for high sediment concentration floods. Jeyapaland et al. [2] applied a Bingham plastic
model (TFLOW computer program) both for the Aberfan case and the Gypsum Tailings
Dam incident (case 12 in Table 1) showing laminar flow behaviour of the tailings flood.

Apart from complex hydraulic calculations applied to specific case studies, more simple
estimations can be performed based on generic empirical relationships. In these
equations, key hydrological parameters associated with dam failures (e.g. outflow
volume, peak discharge, mine waste run-out distance) can be estimated from pre-failure
physical characteristics of the dam (dam height, reservoir volume, etc.), based on
reported historic dam failures. This approach has been successfully applied to estimate
peak discharge and flood volume resulting from water-retention dam failures [8,9,10].
With tailings dams, empirical relationships are very limited probably due to the scarcity
of reliable historical data. Lucia et al. [11] proposed a method to estimate the potential
mine waste run-out distance (at slopes < 4º), based on historical tailings dam failures
and using the value of the residual strength of liquefied tailings. Although these are
based on simple empirical equations, the model requires some detailed geotechnical
data of the material contained in the tailings ponds as well as on the geometry of the
downstream valley, which are not always available or provided by the mining
companies.

The aim of this paper is to propose a set of simple empirical equations, to describe
tailings pond characteristics and outflow hydraulic behaviour, based on data from
historic dam failures. Although accuracy of these estimations should be approached
with great caution, the equations provide a first and universal way for simple

3
estimations on potential risk and impact related to tailings dam breaks, using basic
physical dam information.

2. METHODOLOGY
Several investigations have attempted to summarise the causes of major tailings dam
failures throughout the world. The most recent and main synthesis was by ICOLD [12]
(221 tailings dam incidents), based on the previous database by USCOLD [13], which
collected a large amount of information on incidents in the USA (185 tailings dam
incidents) that occurred during the period 1917-1989. This database has been
supplemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [14] with recent mining
and mineral processing damage cases in the USA and the United Nations
Environmental Programme [15] (last updated 4 Mar 2006) in which a selection of 83
major tailings dam failures was compiled. The analysis of tailings dam performance
provides important knowledge on key design factors on dam stability [12], including on
site characteristics (geology, seismicity, climate, upstream catchment area), selection of
embankment and construction sequence type, as well as hazard assessment (heavy rain,
flooding, earthquake). Empirical models of dam failure impact and tailings outflow
movement are more difficult to establish in a universal way due to the severe lack of
reliable data from previous incidents and high levels of complexity on dam break
mechanisms, breach size, water-tailings concentration and spilled volume.

The e-EcoRisk database (e-EcoRisk – A Regional Enterprise Network Decision-Support

System for Environmental Risk and Disaster Management of Large-Scale Industrial
Spills) was fed with the information mentioned above, after a process of revision, cross-
checking and updating of the data using existing bibliographic sources. During this
process, a detailed literature review was conducted to gather as much information on
tailings dam failures as possible. New data were added and information gaps were
completed using different data sources such as journals, conference proceedings,
reports, published and unpublished dissertations and web pages [2,3,4,16,17,18,19,20,
21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28, among others]. Data from one of the European dams were
obtained by interview with one dam failure witness and mine worker. The compilation

4
of data from different European countries was achieved through the collaboration of the
e-EcoRisk partners.

The reports on tailings dam failures are incomplete and heavily biased. There is no
(complete) worldwide database of all historical failures. This database is, therefore, a
subset of the actual number of tailings dam incidents in the world. The majority of
tailings dam incidents remain unreported, especially in developing countries. In cases
where a known accident did occur it is often difficult to access basic information
regarding the tailings dam and its condition prior to the incident (e.g. dam height,
tailings storage volume, tailings thickness, water content, etc). To date, 250 cases of
tailings dam failures in the world have been compiled. For each case, as much
information as possible was sought and documented. In the majority of cases, the
information obtained is scarce; therefore, only 28 accidents (Table 1) with complete
information on tailings outflow volume and flood run-out distance have been used in the
correlation analysis presented in this study.

3. RESULTS

In water-storage dams, sensitivity studies have indicated that reservoir volume as well
as dam height are critical factors in the magnitude of dam failure hydrographs [9,29].
The simplest proposed relations involve those two parameters, considering that most of
the water volume stored at the reservoir was released. In the case of tailings ponds, the
tailings outflow volume from dam incidents depends on the liquefaction process, break
time, breach size and the amount of water content in the pond at the failure time. In
most failure cases, tailings ponds are never emptied and, indeed, only a limited portion
of the mine waste is released (see Table 1). Tailings outflow volume seems a more
appropriate means to establish correlations with flood related parameters instead of
reservoir volume. In tailings ponds, the height difference between the crest of the dam
and the decant surface, known as freeboard, is rather small, and essentially the dam
height equals the thickness of the tailings deposit. Accordingly, dam height provides a
good approximation of the tailings thickness and its potential energy during the dam
failure.

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In Fig. 1, a plot of dam height (H) of the known historical tailings dam failures versus
the outflow run-out distance (Dmax) is shown. The graph shows a great dispersion of
data and a poor relationship between these variables, described by the following
regression equation:

Dmax = 0.0528 × H 1.413 r 2 = 0.16 Eq. 1

The envelope curve for run-out distance from all the tailings dams has the equation:

Dmax = 0.008 × H 3.23 Eq. 2

This poor correlation shows that run-out distance depends on other factors not
considered in the equation, such as outflow mine waste volume, gradient and
topography to which tailings flood debouches.

A better relationship was obtained using mine waste outflow volume (VF), as the
independent variable (note that VF includes tailings and water); although great data
dispersion is still present (Fig. 2). A plot of these variables encompassing all the data
points from Table 1 except case 8 (Churchrock, USA) provided the following regression
equation:

Dmax = 14.445 × VF r 2 = 0.56

0.756
Eq. 3

with a standard error (SE) of 0.62%. The envelope curve obtained for this data set
follows the equation:

Dmax = 112.61× VF
0.81
Eq. 4

Data dispersion may be explained by the water content at the decant pond at the time of
failure, the water/tailings ratio at the run-out flood, as well as the drainage slope.

The Churckrock dam (case 8) was an earthfill dam type located at a uranium mine. A
major difference with other tailings dams is that the Churckrock dam retained only clear

6
water and the outflow peak following the failure moved downstream a larger distance in
relation to the dam height and outflow volume than conventional tailings dam failures.
This indicates that this spill behaved in the manner of a water-storage dam failure and,
accordingly, it was neither used in the regression equations (Eq. 3 and Eq. 5) nor on the
envelope curves (Eq. 4 and Eq. 6). Other historic mine waste dam failures referred to in
bibliographic sources as water-storage dams (WR in Table 1) at mine complexes have
been marked on the different plots. These cases include dams from Cities Services
(USA), Ollinghouse (USA) and Omai (Guyana) (cases 9, 21 and 22 in Table 1).
Contrary to the Churchrock dam, these examples did contain tailings and so these case
studies were included in Fig. 2.

In Fig. 1 (outflow run-out distance vs dam height) tailings ponds of water retention type
(incident cases 8, 9, 21, 22 in Table 1) or containing a large volume of water at the
failure time (incident cases 2, 5) are plotted close to the envelope curve, whereas those
tailings ponds with lower water content plot in the lower part of the graph (incident
cases 1, 13, 20, 25, 27 in Table 1). In Fig. 2 (outflow run-out distance vs mine waste
outflow volume) data points are represented around a regression line which separate two
data groups: (1) below the regression line data points correspond to incidents with a
shorter tailings outflow run-out distance, and (2) above the line comprise those cases
with a longer downstream dispersion of tailings outflow. The first group includes
incidents with a high viscosity of the spilled mine waste (cases 3, 12, 13); a limitation
on the tailings extent due to obstacles, topographic restrictions and barriers (cases 1, 23,
25); and those with very low slope gradient downstream of the pond. This is the case of
Gypsum Tailings Dam (case 12) emplaced over a flat surface, containing non-plastic silt
tailings with an average field water of about 30 percent [2]. In the case of Merriespruit
dam, South Africa (case 18), a tailings spill of wet materials travelled 2 km before being
halted and contained by an ornamental lake [30]. Other examples of a tailings release
with short run-out distance is the Stancil dam (USA, case 25) where the tailings
flowslide was blocked at a creek near the embankment toe [12].

The second cluster of data points (above regression line in Fig. 2) comprises those waste
ponds which stored a larger volume of water with the tailings as well as those failures

7
related to heavy rains and dam overtopping (cases 5, 14, 15, 17 in Table 1). Some
examples includes La Patagua New Dam (case 15) and Los Maquis (case 17), both in
Chile, where water contents of the tailings reached 70 and 85%, respectively [19]. A
different case is incident 28 (Unidentified, USA; Table 1) in which an anomalous
tailings outflow volume (about one-third of the impoundment volume [12]) was
reported, which apparently was not related to the large water volume stored behind the
dam.

Hagen [9] and the Committee on the Safety of Existing Dams [31] developed a criteria
for water-storage dams to estimate peak discharge based upon the product of the dam
height (H) and reservoir volume (V), also known as dam factor (H x V). This factor is a
crude index of the energy expenditure at the dam when it fails [10]. In most of the
tailings dam incidents only a part of the pond volume was released, which is a major
difference in behaviour with water-storage dam accidents. Therefore for tailings dams a
better relationship was found when dam factor was based upon the tailings spilled
volume (VF). In Fig. 3, a plot of a “tailings dam” factor (H x VF) versus the outflow run-
out distance (Dmax) is shown. The regression line including all the data except case 8
(Fig. 3) is the following:
Dmax = 1.612 × ( HV F ) 0.655 r 2 = 0.57 Eq. 5

where H is dam height in meters and VF is waste outflow volume in 106 x m3.
An envelope curve encompassing all the historical tailings dam failures except case 8
has the equation:

D max = 12.46 × ( HV F ) 0.79 Eq. 6

A major limitation to the application of this equation to risk analysis of standing tailings
dams consists of the uncertainty of potential tailings outflow volume (VF) in the case of
failure. Another empirical relationship (Fig. 4) was found between the tailings storage
volume and the tailings released at the incidents (using incident cases of Table 1), which
has the equation

8
 V F = 0.354 × VT r 2 = 0.86
1.008
Eq. 7

The above equation shows, that in average, one third of the tailings and water at the
decant pond is released during dam failures. The envelope curve represents the
maximum tailings volume that can be released in the most extreme situation in which
pond volume was emptied following the dam break, as is the case of water-storage dam
accidents or those of industrial (diluted) waste ponds.

Available historic data on peak discharges from failures of tailings dams are scarce. In
this study only three cases have been found: (1) from Buffalo Creek (USA; case 5), with
an estimated discharge of 1415 m3s-1 using the slope-area method [10]; (2) from Los
Frailes (Spain; case 16), with a recorded discharge of 811 m3s-1, using a rating curve
obtained for clear water at a gauge station located 11 km downstream of the tailings
dam [32]; and (3) from McLauren gold Mine (USA) [33], with an associated discharge
of ca. 200 m3s-1, estimated using the dam factor/discharge equation proposed by Costa
[10].

On the basis of historical water-storage (constructed and natural) dam breaks, Costa
[10] proposed several empirical relationships obtained using dam height (H), water
volume contained at the reservoir (V) and the resulting flood peak discharge (Q) when it
failed (see Figs. 5 and 6). A major contribution of the Costa [10] paper is the analysis of
floods from natural dams including ice dams (water impounded within or behind glacial
ice), moraine dams, volcanic flow dams and landslide dams. Landslide dams typically
involve large volumes of sediments producing wide abutments, which are partly eroded
by water during dam overtopping and breaching [34]. According to Costa [10] this
explains that flood peaks from failed landslide dams appear to be smaller than
constructed dam failures with the same dam height and reservoir volume (Figs. 5 and
6). Similarly, when a tailings dam is overtopped by runoff excess from the drainage
basin, there is commonly large water content for tailings sediment before a full breach is
developed which would be added to the tailings outflow volume. A tailings flood is
commonly composed of water with high sediment concentration which provides a wide

9
range of fluid behavior from debris flow to muddy floodwater. This wide range of flow
behavior is reflected in the representation of the few available historical data points
(Fig. 5 and 6), which corresponds to Buffalo Creek (case 5) and Los Frailes (case 16).
On the one hand, Buffalo Creek dam incident plots on the regression line corresponding
to water-storage dams due to a dam failure caused by flow overtopping in relation to
extreme rainfall. The run-out flood contained a mixture of water and carbon residua
with a turbulent flow behavior [2], which indeed plots on the regression line of incidents
related to constructed earthfill dams for water-storage. Regarding Los Frailes tailings
dam incident, it was released a high viscous flow containing a large proportion of
tailings. The mine waste flood discharge was recorded at a gauge station located 11 km
downstream of the tailings dam. The hydrograph shape comprised two peaks, with the
first one reaching 811 m3s-1 and a second one of 294 m3s-1, according to a rating curve
calibrated for water flow, which probably overestimated the mine waste discharge due
to its higher viscosity [32]. The first hydrograph peak was composed of a water-
dominant flow, mainly from the upper water-laid layer at the reservoir, whereas the
second contained a high tailings load in a high viscosity flow (Fig. 7). As shown in Fig.
5, Los Frailes tailings dam incident (case 16) plots on the regression line obtained from
historical failures of landslide dams after Costa [10]. The discharge estimation from the
landslide dam failure equation is 1189 m3s-1, which is a similar order of magnitude to
the the 811 m3s-1 recorded at the gauge station for the first hydrograph peak [32].

Fig. 6 shows the empirical relationship between dam factor and peak discharge of
historical dam failures of constructed and natural dams by Costa [10], in which dam
factor (H x V) for Los Frailes tailings dam failure was plotted using both the total
tailings volume stored at the decant pond (case 16 point 2) and the outflow volume
(case 16 point 1). It is shown that for tailings dam failures more robust results are
obtained considering the spilled tailings volume than the ones applying the total tailings
volume contained at the reservoir when dam failed.

4. DISCUSSION

10
In this paper, empirical relationships of mine decant pond geometric characteristics with
hydrologic parameters of floods from mine waste spills from historic dam failures were
obtained. These relationships provide a first approximation to estimate the tailings
outflow volume and the mine waste run-out distance from a dam failure, although these
assessments may contain large uncertainties considering the high standard errors of the
regression equations. These errors result from a large variety of parameters affecting the
mine waste flow, including sediment load, fluid behavior (Newtonian or Bingham-
plastic) which depends on the type of failure (e.g. seismic action, static liquefaction,
slide, etc), particle-dependent rheology of the suspension, topography and valley
gradient and presence of obstacles impeding the slurry to flow among others. Other
source of uncertainty is related to the lack of data related with the water volume existing
at the time of failure either stored at the decant pond or linked to the meteorological
causes triggering the dam failure (intense rainfall, hurricanes, rapid snowmelt, ice
accumulation in the tailings dam, etc), which may change indeed the hydrologic
conditions (peak discharge, tailings outflow volume) and the run-out distance of the
tailings. Those conditions are site and event specific and therefore difficult to be
considered by empirical relationships.

These uncertainties may be reduced considering the most similar case in the historical
database. This analysis can also be used as a deterministic tool to provide information
on the largest peak discharge and/or potential distance of the tailings flood by using the
proposed envelope curves. Note that even in this case, a greater distance may be reached
if the released tailings is mixed and diluted within a river water flow, as happened in
various historical tailings dam incidents. In spite of the described limitations, the
method provides preliminary data on the tailings outflow hydraulic characteristics using
basic available tailings dam and embankment parameters, which may be used, for
instance, to classify the failure risk associated to a large population of tailings dams.

These equations were applied on two case studies of the e-Ecorisk project (Table 2): (1)
Los Frailes dam (Aznalcollar, Spain, case 16, Table 1) which failed in April, 1998; and
(2) the inactive Ashes Dam at the Almagrera mine (Spain), an example of an un-
breached tailings dam.On 25 April 1998, the rupture of the dam containing the tailings

11
reservoir of the pyrite mine of Aznalcóllar caused a spill of 4.5 x 106 m3 of acid water
and pyrite ore. The resulting mine waste, containing high concentrations of heavy
metals (mean particle size 12 µm), was of a solid content of some 0.88 x 106 m3 and
2.97 x 103 Mg mass [6]. The accident provoked the inundation of the floodplains of the
rivers Agrio and Guadiamar (average stream gradient of 0.00146) and was close to
affecting the Guadalquivir marshlands posing a substantial threat to the ecosystems of
the Doñana Natural and National Parks. The tailings flood led to the sedimentation of
pyrite contaminated waste [35, 36] along the floodplain of the Agrio- Guadiamar
system, covering 2616 ha from the failed dam to the start of the Guadalquivir
marshlands. Heavy metal pollution (zinc, lead, and cadmium among others; [37])
mostly affected the superficial soil layers (0–20 cm), although in some coarser soils
pollution may penetrate down to at least 50–80 cm [38].

The empirical regression equations proposed in this study provide an estimation of mine
waste outflow volume ranging between 5.4-7.3 x 106 m3 (from equation 7; Table 3),
whereas the actual Aznalcollar incident released 4.6 x 106 m3 which includes acid water
and pyrite ore. The mine waste run-out distance estimated from equation 5 ranges
between 42 and 51 km (Table 3). The actual run-out distance downstream of the
Guadiamar river was between 40 and 45 km (according to Antón-Pacheco et al. [39]),
which is similar to the empirically estimated tailings outflow travel distance.

The Almagrera mine, the second test case, is within the same metalogenetic province
and mining context of the Aznalcollar mines. At the Almagrera mine, the ashes dam is
34.5 m in height with an actual tailings volume of 2.8 x 106 m3, although it was
designed to store about 3.2 x 106 m3 of milled waste [40]. In the case of dam failure, the
proposed empirical regression lines show an estimated run-out distance between 16 and
32 km (Table 3) for present conditions (volume stored of 2.8 x 106 m3). The Almagrera
dam is connected with a tributary stream which joins the Odiel River (stream gradient
0.00154) ca. 3.5 km downstream. According to this estimated run-out distance, the
tailings waste may reach the Odiel River and pollutants can be dispersed by the river’s
stream flow, in a similar way to the Aznacollar incident.

12
The proposed equations should be considered as a first approach in tailings dam risk
studies, but more precise deterministic models are required to provide precise site by
site tailings flood impacts. Errors may be large on extreme cases either for tailings dam
containing high water volume, or for hyperconcentrated flows. Obstacles or barriers
along the slurry pathway should also be considered. On the positive side, there is a lack
of detailed data on most of the existing tailings dams of the world. In addition, for
operative tailings dams is not possible to anticipate the volume of water that may be
involved or the thickness of the tailings contained at the decant pond at time of failure.
In those cases, basic dam information (dam height and volume), which can be obtained
from national dam databases or by remote sensing analysis, may provide preliminary
data to assess potential risk to downstream socio-economic activities and environmental
impacts.

5. CONCLUSIONS
Dam failure impact depends on the tailings outflow travel distance and path, and on the
exposure and vulnerability of goods, population, land use, water use and environmental
values of the natural areas located downstream. The diversity of the tailings dam
characteristics (dam type, dam situation, type of sequentially raised tailing dam, dam
foundation, dam fill material, state of activity, storage volume, tailings dam height,
tailings’ density and pond water volume, among others), make any universal prediction
assessing dam failure impacts very speculative. In addition, detailed risk assessments
involve timely and costly geotechnical, hydrological and hydraulic studies which can
only be completed with either or both the complicity of mining companies and political
authorities.

In this study, a worldwide database of historic failures was collected from which a
regression analysis was carried out in order to establish relationships and trends. The
resulting empirical correlations among physical parameters (namely dam height and
pond volume) of the tailings reservoir and tailings flood characteristics can be applied to
provide a first estimate on the volume of tailings spills, tailings run-out distance and,
with the appropriate measurements and observations, even to assess the outflow peak
discharge. In these relationships, two possible solutions have been provided: (1) a

13
conservative estimation based on the regression equations of the historic tailings dam
failures; and (2) the worst case scenario estimation based on the envelope curves
developed from historic dam failures from tailings dams and water retention dams.

Tailings outflow volume from a dam failure can be reasonably estimated if total tailings
pond volume is known. Then, the estimated tailings spill can be used in combination
with the dam factor (height and volume) and the pond’s tailings volume for prediction
purposes on the estimation of run-out distance of standing dams. Two case studies
included in the European Commission e-Ecorisk project, namely the Los Frailes
(Aznalcollar) historic dam failure and the standing tailings dam at Almagrera (Ashes
dam) complex have been discussed in view of the results provided by the proposed
regression equations. It is evident that the results need to be treated with caution, due to
the uncertainty present in documentary evidence and the diversity of the tailings dams.
However, the estimates obtained for the Aznacollar dam failure provided similar values
in terms of tailings outflow volume and run-out distance to the field observations. In
summary, the proposed regression equations provide a first approach to assess some risk
parameters at dams with a lack of information or prior to further detailed studies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are very grateful to Varyl Thorndycraft for the critical review of the
original manuscript, and for his very useful comments and suggestions. This research
has been funded by the European Commission through the project “A regional
enterprise network decision-support system for environmental risk and disaster
management of large-scale industrial spills”, e-Ecorisk Project (contract no. EVG1-
2002-0068) and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (HP2006-0072).

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 Table 1. Historical tailings dam failures used in the correlation analysis. Legend:
RING: Ring dyke; WR: Water Retention; UPS: Dams subsequently raised upstream;
MXSQ: Dam comprising different raising typology (upstream, centreline and
downstream); H: Dam height; VF: Volume of tailings released.
Ref. Date of Type of Dam Impoudment Run-out Dam Released
Nº. Name of the Dam failure dam Height volume Distance Factor Volume
(year) (m) (x106 m3) (km) (HxVF) (x106 m3)
1 Arcturus (Zimbawe ) 1978 RING 25 1.7-2.0 Mt 0.3 0.5 0.0211
2 Bafokeng (South Africa) 1974 RING 20 13 45 60 3
3 Baia Mare (Romania) 2000 UPS 7 0.8 0.18 0.7 0.1
4 Bellavista (Chile) 1965 RING 20 0.45 0.8 1.4 0.07
5 Buffalo Creek (USA) 1972 UPS 14-18 0.5 64.4 7-9 0.5
6 Cerro Negro No.3 (Chile) 1965 UPS 20 0.5 5 1.7 0.085
7 Cerro Negro No.4 (Chile) 1985 MXSQ 40 2 8 20 0.5
96.5-
8 Churchrock (USA) 1979 WR 11 0.37 112.6 4.07 0.37
9 Cities Service (USA) 1971 WR 15 12.34 120 135 9
10 El Cobre Old Dam (Chile) 1965 UPS 35 4.25 12 66.5 1.9
11 Galena Mine (USA) 1974 UPS 9 0.61 0.034 0.0038
Gypsum Tailings Dam 0.88-
12 (USA) 1966 UPS 11 7 Mt 0.3 1.43 2 x105t
13 Hokkaido (Japan) 1968 UPS 12 0.3 0.15 1.08 0.09
14 Itabirito (Brazil) 1986 Gravity 30 12 3 0.1
15 La Patagua New Dam (Chile) 1965 RING 15 5 0.525 0.035
16 Los Frailes (Spain) 1998 RING 27 15-20 41 53.51 4.6
17 Los Maquis (Chile) 1965 UPS 15 0.043 5 0.315 0.021
18 Merriespruit (South Africa) 1994 RING 31 7.04 2 18.6 2.5 Mt
19 Mochikoshi No.1 (Japan) 1978 UPS 28 0.48 8 2.24 0.08
20 Mochikoshi No.2 (Japan) 1978 UPS 19 0.15 0.057 0.003
21 Ollinghouse (USA) 1985 WR 5 0.12 1.5 0.125 0.025
22 Omai (Guyana) 1995 WR 44 5.25 80 184.8 4.2
23 Phelps-Dodge (USA) 1980 UPS 66 2.5 8 132 2
24 Sgurigrad (Bulgaria) 1966 UPS 45 1.52 6 9.9 0.22
25 Stancil (USA) 1989 UPS 9 0.074 0.1 0.342 0.038
26 Stava (Italy) 1985 RING 29.5 0.3 4.2 5.605 0.19
27 Tapo Canyon (USA) 1994 UPS 24 0.18
28 Unidentified (USA) 1973 UPS 43 0.5 25 7.31 0.17
29 Veta del Agua Nº1 (Chile) 1985 MXSQ 24 0.7 5 6.72 0.28

19
Table 2. Tailings dam characteristics of the selected examples, and channel slope of the major
river connected to the tailings pond.
Tailings Average
Dam name Dam Height volume at slope
decant pond downstream
(m) (x106 m3) m m-1
Los Frailes Dam (Spain) 27 15-20 0.00146
Almagrera Ashes Dam (Spain) 34.5 2.8 0.00154

20
Table 3. Tailings volume for different dams, and observed spilled volume and distance run-out
of tailings in relation to the Los Frailes (Aznalcollar) dam incident. VT: Total tailings volume at
dam. VF: Tailings outflow volume; D: Run-out distance of tailings following dam breach.
Tailings outflow volume and pollutant run-out distance were estimated using equations 7 and 5.
*Note that tailings spill volume includes acid water and pyrite ore.
VF VF’ from D
VT observed eq.7 observed D (km) estimated
(x106 m3) (x106 m3) (x106 m3) (km) from eq. 5 using :
Dam name VT VF’
Los Frailes Dam (case nº
15-20 4.6* 5.4-7.3 41 82-99 42-51
16 in Table 1)
Almagrera Ashes Dam 2.8 1 32 16

21
FIGURE CAPTIONS

Figure 1. Graph showing the dam height (H in metres) at time of failure, versus the run-out
distance of tailings following dam breach (Dmax in km) for the historical failure cases, with
numbers keyed to Table 1.

Figure 2. Graph showing the tailings outflow volume due to tailings dam incidents (VF, in
millions of cubic metres) versus the run-out distance of tailings from historical failure cases
(Dmax in km), with numbers referred in Table 1.

Figure 3. Graph showing “tailings dam” factor (H x VF; H in metres and VF in 106 x m3) versus
run-out distance of tailings (Dmax in km) for the historical failure cases, with numbers keyed to
Table 1.

Figure 4. Graph showing the tailings outflow volume from the tailings dam (VF in 106 x m3)
versus the volume of tailings stored at the dam (VT in 106 x m3) at the time of the incident.

Figure 5. Graph the dam height (H in metres) at time of failure, versus peak discharge (m3s-1)
for constructed and landslide dams (dates from Costa [10]) and tailings dams (case 5: Buffalo
Creek, USA; case 16: Los Frailes, Aznalcollar, Spain).

Figure 6. Graph the dam factor (H x V) versus peak discharge (m3s-1) for constructed and
landslide dams (data from Costa [10]) and tailings dams (Case 5: Buffalo Creek, USA; Case 16:
Los Frailes, Aznalcollar, Spain. (numbers keyed to Table 1). Dam factor (H x V) for Los
Frailes was plotted using both the total tailings volume at decant pond (case 16 point 2)
and the tailings outflow volume (case 16 point 1). In the Aznacollar incident, a
discharge-dam factor relationship similar to landslide dams is obtained from a dam
factor calculated from the spilled tailings volume instead of the total dam tailings
volume which is used on water-retention dam failures relationships.

Figure 7. Slurry flood hydrograph of the Aznacollar spill in the El Guijo gauge station,
11 km downstream of the Los Frailes tailings dam, in the Guadiamar river. The
hydrograph comprises two peaks related to a first water pulse and a second tailings
flow. (after Ayala-Carcedo [32]).

22