services
Mine Waste Management
GRE manages mine waste with an interdisciplinary approach involving: mining engineering, civil engineering, water management, environmental engineering, and geotechnical engineering. GRE can design not only routine waste rock facilities, but also can carry out complicated tailings compaction and consolidation studies, and dynamic (earthquake) stability analyses. GRE has designed and constructed tailings dams, designed mine waste rock structures, evaluated the feasibility of complicated co-disposed waste facilities, and has applied state-of-the-art designs for the encapsulation of acid-generating mine wastes to reduce the risk of acid rock drainage (ARD).
A key to controlling the cost of dealing with ARD is to minimize the volume of water and atmospheric oxygen that comes into contact with potentially acid-generating rock and to control the microbes which catalyze ARD reactions. GRE is skilled in the design of evapotranspiration covers and ARD source control projects that serve this purpose.
Mine Waste Management services include:
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Tailings Dam Design – Rockfill, Earthfill, Upstream, and Downstream Construction Methods
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Dry Stack Tailings Design
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Acid Rock Drainage (ARD) Prevention and Mitigation
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Waste Rock Facility and PAG Encapsulation Design
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Geomembrane Liner System Design
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Technology Screening and Risk Assessment
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Tailings and Mine Waste Co-Disposal Design
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Geochemical Characterization and Modeling
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Unsaturated Flow (Mine Waste Leachate) Modeling
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Mine Waste Cover Design and Modeling
