Pebble Mine, Alaskan mining, and the hidden facts

The Pebble Mine in Alaska is a blogger’s delight.  It is contentious, there is no correct answer, and it is making mining history.  I have written extensively about it and collected my writings into a single document.  Today another blog posting appeared attacking the the proposed mine.  The topic is essentially Alaskans go to the polls to stop or continue mining.  An interesting point in the new posting is that Knight Piesold are the consultants designing the mine waste disposal facilities and in particular the tailings impoundment.  The presence of Knight Piesold raises questions that need to be answered before any Alaskan citizen is asked to vote on an issue critical to the future well-being of the state.  Here is why I believe the facts are not in the public domain that should be in the public domain in this critical debate. 

I worked for this company many years ago.  A bit of history:  F. E. Kanthack was a engineer in the early 1900s in South Africa.  He founded the consulting company that is today Knight Piesold.  He built the company consulting to the power industry in South Africa. 

By the time I worked for the company it was called Watermeyer, Legge, Piesold & Uhlmann (WLPU).  They were his partners who took over when he retired.  By means I cannot now recall, I got a job with them at the end of my second year of university.  WIth another student, we spent three months surveying the ground around the base of the foundations for the new Freeway being built on the southern edge of Johannesburg.  I still have nightmares about the accuracy of our survey.  But the accuracy probably did not matter, for the foundations were built over the old mine workings and were designed to settle a large amount as the old working collapsed and subsidence took over.  The columns holding up the freeway structure were separated from the foundation and it was possible to jack the columns up as the footing settled.  Maybe they are still doing this. 

At the end of my third year, I worked for them again.  This time on a power station in East London.  All I recall is hours in the humid wind, checking the steel placement of a foundation block for a large generator.  Only when i said there was a one-to-one correspondence between the reinforcement drawings and the steel as placed was the contractor allowed to pour the concrete. 

As a postgraduate student, Cliff McMillan, one of WLPUs senior structural engineers taught me advanced structural analysis.  A most honorable, engaging, and brilliant man, he inspired me and made me want to be a structural engineer.  Many years later his reputation was tarnished when a cooling tower he had designed collapsed.  I never did find out what happened, why it happened, or what happened to him.  But my point is that engineering failures can happen to the best of engineers.  Particularly when we are pushing the envelope.

At any rate by that time I had an engineering failure under my belt too.  I had designed a new tailings impoundment for De Beers.  It was built on top of the old tailings impoundment.  Brilliantly, I specified that the pool of water on the impoundment should be kept far away from the outer dike.  In the desert that should be no problem I reckoned.  But of course they “stored” water on the impoundment, the pool came to the edge of the dike, it promptly failed, and everything flowed every which way.  It happens to the best of us when reality collides with our theories and dreams.  And when we are doing something not done before in engineering.

By the time I had joined Steffan, Robertson and Kirsten, WLPU had morphed and emigrated.  It became Knight Piesold in the United States and at various conference I would run into Don East who spearheaded their emmigration to the new world.  He asked me to join them but I had other ambitions.  Many years later after I “officially” retired, I went to Lima, Peru at the invitation of Knight Piesold to see if I would “work” for them there.  I was not impressed by Lima—it seemed too much like Johannesburg with fear and security all over the place, so I declined and came instead to Vancouver to write this blog.

Thus I have triple interest in their role at Pebble.  I wish to see them succeed; I am curious to see their designs; and I wonder at the people who will be taking mine tailings impoundments into new places not hitherto explored by engineering.

I emphasize that just because they are from South Africa, just because they are doing new things, and just because they are ordinary human beings is not a good reason to attack their role at Pebble.  Instead we should be asking:

1. Who is the design engineer, the person, not the firm?
2. What is his/her track record for innovation and success?
3. Who is overseeing and checking the work?
4. Do they have peer reviewers and who are they?
5. What concerns have the peer reviewers expressed?
6. How are the concerns being addressed?
7. What is the design–is it an old standard or is it innovative?
8. What are the design criteria both for operation, closure, and post-closure/

No doubt the answers will come in time.  But if I as a citizen of Alaska had to vote, I would demand the answer to at least these questions before I cast so critical a vote that will affect the economy and environment of the state for the foreseeable future.