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Design and Assessment of Mine Waste Structures Date: Friday 9 February 2024 Topics:
Summary: Significant progress has been made in recent years in the engineering and environmental management of mine waste and tailings. The first and arguably most important step in designing sustainable and resilient mine waste storage facilities is understanding the engineering properties of mine waste materials, including hydrology, groundwater interactions, and seepage behavior.
This presentation provides an overview of key topics in mine waste and tailings management, including surface tailings disposal, conventional tailings embankment design, and seepage analysis. An integrated approach to site characterization will be emphasized, leveraging laboratory and field testing as well as numerical simulations. Characteristic examples from research and consulting projects will be presented, highlighting innovative dewatering techniques, cold regions engineering challenges, and the behavior of complex mine waste materials. Case studies will illustrate how advanced analytical tools, large-scale field trials, and material blending strategies can improve waste management practices.
Presenters:
Dr. G. Ward Wilson is a Professor of Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta, where he also holds the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Geotechnique. He brings over 30 years of industrial experience to his practice in advanced mine waste management and unsaturated soil mechanics. He has extensive work experience as a consulting engineer and has maintained a strong industrial focus through his research programs. Dr. Wilson is currently engaged in large scale-up experiments for waste rock at the Grasberg and Antamina mines to investigate various mitigation techniques as well as a new and innovative research program for the blending of tailings and waste rock (Paste Rock) to produce new high-strength sealing materials for mine waste management systems.
Dr. Nicholas Beier is an Associate Professor of Geoenvironmental Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. Dr. Beier’s research interests encompass various aspects of tailings and mine waste management for surface mining operations, including oil sands and base and precious metals. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of new tailings dewatering and management strategies through simulation and subsequent physical testing in the laboratory and field. This research entails further the development of a novel analytical tool, TMSim (tailings management simulation), which can be used to evaluate hypothetical or specific operating strategies and design alternatives that will support technology assessment, scenario-analysis and mine planning. Other research includes cold regions engineering and its application to mining in northern climates and permafrost regions including control of acid mine drainage from waste rock piles and behavior of frozen fine grained tailings deposits.
Mr. Michel Julien is the Vice President, Environment & Critical Infrastructures. Prior to his appointment, he has held roles as Vice President, Environment and Corporate Director, Environment and has been with Agnico Eagle since 2011. He was a Principal at Golder Associates where he contributed for over 20 years in the field of mine waste and water management. He is Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Civil and Mineral Engineering Department, and former Chairman of the Board of the Research Institute on Mines and Environment (RIME) of Polytechnique-UQAT. Mr. Julien is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC). He holds a B.Sc., B.Eng. (Mining Engineering – Polytechnique of Montreal), an M.Sc. (Geo – Engineering – University of Minnesota) and a Ph.D. (Mineral Engineering – Polytechnique of Montreal). He is a registered Professional Engineer in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
Event Highlights
SAIGE Geotechnical Division presents:
Young geotechnical professionals under 35 working in geotechnical engineering, engineering geology, mining, or civil construction will have the opportunity to showcase their work at the 11th South African Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference (SAYGEC), taking place in September 2026 in the Central Drakensberg.
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