RE:Containment dams were built at the mine site after the slideAn interesting observation and remark by the head of major mines for the Yukon government,
Those dams "appear to have contained any solution" on site
Excerpt from this CBC news article:
Government officials say Victoria Gold, which owns and operates the mine, built two containment dams immediately after the slide. Those dams "appear to have contained any solution" on site, said Russell McDiarmid, head of major mines for the Yukon government.
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And here's an important question I've yet heard to be asked or even mentioned by anyone on this bullboard:
The pipe that transports the leached solution has a capacity of 2,070 m3/hr or about 455,000 gallon of solution per hour according to the technical report. So, my question is; am I to believe there's no shut off valves anywhere in this system (within the leach pad area itself in order to quickly shut off the solution flow either partially or for all areas of the leach pad whether for maintenance or for emergent events such as this? And if so were any of those valves shut off immediately following the event?
It simply defies logic to me that these leach pad facilities would be engineered with no way to manage flow volumes including a provision to completely shut off solution flows. Are we to believe that no solution shut off valves exist anywhere and that in an event like this millions of gallons of solution can just flow off the pad, down the slide, offsite into the creeks, etc? Really? Imagine if an oil company didn't have any valves on their pipeline or gaslines that are thousands of miles long and a pipe break occurred, or a city water treatment / sewage plant had no shut off vavles, or any other major industry transporting hazardous liquids?
I haven't looked in the technical report yet and that level of design may not be included there, but I'm going to be looking at this aspect.
If no shut off valves exist (which I highly doubt) then if this project proceeds they best get them installed.
HB77