Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia:

I. I. Kovlekov, Professor at a Chair, Mining Institute, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, kovlekov@mail.ru
A. F. Konstantinov, Professor at Chair, Physico-Technical Institute, Candidate of Geographical Sciences
S. P. Alkov, Senior Lecturer, Mining Institute
A. A. Dmitriev, Senior Lecturer, Mining Institute

Upon transition to the market economy, many Russian mines gave up competition and went out of business. For the first turn, crisis affected mines in remote areas in the North, with the severe environment and undeveloped infrastructure. A representative example is underground and placer gold mines in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Following hush closing-down of failed mining and processing plants, hazardous industrial sites of tailings ponds with toxic content of ore concentration rejects and harmful elements of arsenic, mercury, potassium cyanide and lead turned out to be abeyant. It is required to ensure safety of these objects given the absence of former owners-subsoil users. The local authorities in the areas of the tailings ponds possess deficient finance and lack skills to protect population and environment from potential failure of dams at the tailings ponds as a consequence of abnormal convulsions of nature in the form of storm rainfalls, abundant flood flows, earthquakes, etc. This article intends to draw attention of governmental bodies and experts to the above indicated problem. Disastrous effects of accidents at tailings ponds in Brazil (2015), Hungary (2010) and Russia (2009) are described. The scope of the study embraces hydraulic condition of a tailings pond at the former Lebedinsk gold processing plant (closed-up in 1993) in the south of Yakutia, and environmental risks due to the uncontrolled abandoning of the object. Priority efforts toward safety of long-term out-of-operation tailings ponds are identifi ed on a scale of the entire country.

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