2016 – Would Bowties and Critical Controls Contribute to the Prevention of High Consequence / Low Frequency Dam Failures?
Russell Mills PhD,Rebecca Freeman, Malcolm Barker
The global mining industry lives with the risk of catastrophic events such as water storage or tailings dam failures as part of its daily operations, and has developed a number of approaches to enable mine management to understand the nature of the risks and the ways in which they are being managed. One such approach involves the use of bowties for the understanding of the hazards and risks. Building from bowties, the second approach involves the selection and management of controls critical to the prevention or mitigation of the catastrophic event. The Australian mining industry is a world leader in this regard and the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how bowties are constructed, how risks can be semi-quantitatively estimated, how critical controls are selected and managed, and how, if all this is done well, risks can be demonstrated to be as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP).
This paper sets out key themes and presents an example for a tailings dam failure to illustrate the role of bowties and critical controls in management of catastrophic events. It will also highlight the role of bowties in the anticipated introduction of a Safety Case approach to dam risk management. Bowties provide a useful tool for the transfer of risk management knowledge from the designer, to allow dam owner / operators to better understand their risks and to recognise the link between design and operational controls and how they are used to manage those risks to ALARP.
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2011 – Enlarged Cotter Dam Saddle Dams – Materials and Construction
Learn moreMark Locke and Scott Kindred
The Bulk Water Alliance (BWA) consisting of ACTEW and ACTEW-AGL, GHD, and John Holland / Abigroup, are delivering the Enlarged Cotter Dam project in Canberra, ACT. The greatly enlarged reservoir will require two central core rockfill saddle dams on a ridge adjacent to the main dam site. Construction of these two dams was completed in early 2011. The challenges of the site and the Alliance delivery model have provided opportunities for innovation in both use of materials and construction.
The dam foundations were variably weathered and fractured with some highly weathered seams extending below the cutoff trench foundation. The foundation was grouted effectively using GIN grouting and the entire cutoff trench was shotcreted to reduce the risk of piping of the dispersive core material.
The steep topography provided very limited sources of material suitable for a dam core. Potential contingency plans considered included bentonite enrichment of the low plasticity materials or a change to a concrete faced rockfill dam. The high cost of these options drove the decision to use the available residual soils from small gullies by selectively winning material with a higher fines content for use below full supply level. The lack of room on the ridge for stockpiling and conditioning of clays lead to trialling of a continuous mixer for mixing and conditioning the core which was found to be highly successful.
Filter materials were crushed sands and gravels produced from nearby commercial quarries. The materials and grading were generally high quality, with some challenges producing coarser filter materials by blending available aggregate products. A range of options were effectively adopted for placement of the filters including loader placement, trench boxes and spreading from a modified ejector dump truck.
Enlarged Cotter Dam Saddle Dams – Materials and Construction
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2011 – A Statewide Approach to Benchmarking Dam Safety Risk and Continuous Improvement
Learn moreSusan Ryanand Siraj Perera
This paper describes the benefits of the statewide risk reporting framework used in dam safety regulation in Victoria and its ongoing development. Key to this approach is a web-hosted reporting system and benchmarking process, established by the Department of Sustainability and Environment in collaboration with the Victorian water industry. This is the first time that such an approach has been used in Australia for publicly owned dams.
Sector-wide reporting on dam safety is central to the objective-based approach used by the Department in the governance and regulation of the water industry. Water corporations submit detailed annual reports on dam safety status. This incorporates ‘self assessment’ against performance criteria based on ANCOLD risk and dam safety management guidelines. These are collated to produce a statewide report of industry-wide results on the progress of dam safety management programs. This benchmarking process is providing a driver for on-going improvement and proving to be an effective tool for regulation of publicly owned dams.
The reporting framework has significantly advanced the understanding of dam safety risk across the water sector, with outputs easily understood by both dam safety practitioners and decision makers. It has improved monitoring and trend analysis of risk management practices, and is informing policy development on demonstration of the ALARP principle and decision-making about appropriate long-term dam safety levels.
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2011 – Mokoan – Return to Wetland Project
Learn moreDavid R Jeffery
In 2004 the Victorian Government announced the decision to proceed with Australia’s largest dam decommissioning project, the return of the 365,000ML capacity Lake Mokoan to a wetland.
The project has been completed and has resulted in significant river health benefits through liberating environmental flows in the Broken, Goulburn, Murray and Snowy Rivers. Decommissioning has allowed the recovery of water savings for return as environmental flow to the River Murray (30,000 ML/year) and Snowy River (21,000 ML/year).
With decommissioning complete, development of a significant wetland complex across the 8100 hectare site has commenced.
This project has been undertaken at a time when the Broken River basin was exposed to its worst drought conditions in over 100 years and within 11 years of the worst flooding experienced in the nearby Rural City of Benalla. These extremes of climatic conditions and their impacts on the local and irrigation communities have ensured considerable community and stakeholder interest in the decision to proceed with decommissioning and in the subsequent delivery of each of the project elements.
This paper provides an explanation of the drivers for the project, describes the process followed and some of the challenges experienced over the projects seven year life and presents some of the lessons learned along the way.
2011 – MOKOAN – RETURN TO WETLAND PROJECT
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2011 – Design, Construction and Operation of a Partially Lined, Ash Storage Facility Constructed from Mine Waste
Learn moreT. Mortimer, J. McNicol, P. Keefer, W. Ludlow
CS Energy’s Kogan Creek Coal Mine located in the Surat Basin in Queensland, services the 750MW coal fired, Kogan Creek Power Station. Strip mining generates large volumes of mine waste which is typically used to construct waste dumps. Recent work at the mine has focused on using mine waste to construct an ash storage facility to store ash that is piped over 5 km from the power station as a dense phase slurry. The use of mine waste to construct the ash storage facility provides significant cost and time savings, however a range of design, construction and operation issues needed to be addressed to operate a facility of this type.
This paper describes some of the key design, construction and operation considerations for the ash storage facility. Design considerations include pipeline transport through environmentally sensitive areas, addressing the stability of the embankment and the use of a partial LLDPE geomembrane lining system to reduce the risk of seepage from the storage. Construction considerations include post construction (pre ash deposition) floor treatment to reduce potential settlement. Operational considerations include ash slurry deposition, water management of the decant pond and progressive rehabilitation of the final landform.
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