User talk:Oceanflynn/sandbox/tailings ponds

This article fills a lacunae whereby wikilinks for tailings ponds link to the Wikipedia article entitled tailings which has no section on tailings ponds. In the numerous articles on oils sands tailings ponds there is no reference page explaining what a tailings pond is. There are a considerable number of issues surrounding tailings dams accidents as well but again there is no starting point.

This is just the first stub and the sole reference is lamentably old. I will be looking in the literature provided by the mining industry including gold and copper, oil sands, etc that use tailings ponds in their operations for their definitions.

I prefer the Sfn footnotes for their ability to use more exact referencing, multiple authors, exact dates and page numbers.

Definitions with sources
""Refers to the water stored on-site to wash ore and receive waste tailings as a residue. This provides both a water supply and a sediment trap. Two serious environmental problems ensue. The water leaches out metals and other dangerous elements that were formerly trapped underground in a reducing (non-oxidizing) environment ; acidic wastes amplify the leaching. And though usually stable, some dams have burst during flood stages, unleashing a torrent of toxic materials and posing a combined hazard of mudflow and flooding.""

"[A tailing pond is] "a facility designed to receive and store tailings, or the refuse material resulting from the concentration of minerals. A tailing pond is usually built in a depression—for example, a gorge, a creek valley, or a basin—at a distance of several kilometers from a concentration plant. It is impounded by a dam,which is built up from the tailings, and is buttressed. In a tailing pond, tailings in the solid phase gradually settle out, sometimes with the aid of specially added agents, such as coagulants or flocculants. The clarified water is purified and then is either discharged into local basins or returned to the concentration plant for reuse.""

List of bibliographic materials with annotations related to content not yet included in article

 * *Oil sands tailings ponds This is a parallel sandbox project that has potential content references of relevance to this sandbox article "Tailings ponds".