From the Salt Lake Tribune:
Although those tailings could sweep across State Road 201 like a “violent and intense” flash flood in a 7.25-magnitude temblor, an independent investigation has determined that the slurry likely would stop before reaching any homes or buildings.
If a major earthquake strikes the Salt Lake Valley, Kennecott’s mine-tailings impoundment on the northern edge of Magna could fail and spill soupy sediment more than twice as far as the copper company had predicted.
In March 2008, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Kennecott Utah Copper had concealed, since 1988, the potential for a major earthquake-caused tailings disaster in Magna, Utah. The tailings impoundment is located north of Magna and stores an estimated 1 billion tons of fine mine wastes. In 1992, the company conducted a “risk assessment” to determine if full containment of the impoundment would be more expensive than legal costs associated with property damage and citizen deaths.
The Tribune published a 1997 confidential memo, written by Ray D. Gardner, former Chief Legal Officer for Kennecott, that is highly critical of the company’s handling of the potential tailings disaster: “Prior management’s decisions to disregard and conceal legal advice, forego public notice, attempt to establish a residential buffer surreptitiously, collude with the State Engineer to withhold the KL studies from the public, and restrict the distribution of the Reduction Study, collectively and individually, give the appearance of a conspiracy to cover-up a profound threat to public safety.”
During the cover-up, G. Frank Joklik was Kennecott’s president and CEO (1980 to 1993). Joklik, now a mining consultant, is currently on the board of directors for Prime Meridian Resources (PMR), a mining firm seeking to develop several metallic mineral deposits in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
To read more about what Joklik and Kennecott did to cover up the tailings dam threat, go to the Lake Superior Mining News‘ coverage of the scandal: Kennecott Hides Potential for Deadly Tailings Disaster
LSMN
Eve Divine
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