Porcupine Gold Mines, No. 6 Tailings Management Area

Construction of the No. 6 Tailings Management Area (TMA) at the Porcupine Gold Mines commenced in 1983. Since that time, the perimeter dams have been raised in a number of stages using a variety of different methods. Dam heights currently range from approximately 2 m to 35 m around the approximately 11 km perimeter of the No. 6 TMA. This area has an ultimate capacity of approximately 80 million tonnes and a footprint of 590 hectares. 

The dams are founded on till and bedrock or fine grained normally consolidated glaciolacustrine materials

BGC has been retained (since 2012) to conduct several studies related to the site and projects completed for the No 6 TWA have included:

• Annual dam inspections, and training of on-site staff to conduct dam inspections
• TMA and water pond expansion designs, assessment of in-pit and alternate tailings management technologies
• Construction quality assurance for tailings dam raises
• Buttress designs instrumentation installation and geotechnical evaluations to assess the performance of a fully automated instrumentation monitoring system
• Development of a probabilistic water balance and preparation of the tailings management plans