Mexico mulls new tailings controls

The Mexican government is considering tighter regulations for mining tailings.

“We’re going to see what we can remediate of all these open pit mines, the famous tailings that we produce, how we can make sure there are no dam collapses, and what programs we can carry out,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told a press conference.

“This is a good job for the environment secretary [María Luisa Albores], a proposal… and speaking with concession-holders to ask that they help us to do something very concrete together, to benefit the environment,” he added.

No further details of the plans were given.

The safety of tailings has been a major area of focus in the mining industry since the Brumadinho dam collapse in Brazil in 2019, in which around 300 people were killed.

In response, the Global Tailings Review released the first ever Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management in 2020, aimed at strengthening best practices.

In Mexico, a dam collapse at Southern Copper’s Buenavista copper mine in Sonora state in 2014 severely damaged two rivers in one of the country’s worst ever environmental disasters.