ABSTRACT
The crescent volume of solid and liquid residues generated by the mining industry has been waking up the society attention, government and environmental organisms toward the storage in tailings dams. The steady and continuous increase in size of tailings dams and others constructed in the past, filled beyond its storage capacity have been responsible for the large number of accidents by rupture, usually with catastrophic results to the environment. This is an alert that will be necessary the review and a meticulous geological and geotechnical study in the conception of their projects. This paper includes examples of the study of the specific case concerning to the Morro do Ouro Tailing Dam to RPM – Rio Paracatu Mineração (Anglo Gold Company), it is located at Minas Gerais State (Brazil); one of the largest and better compacted embankment dams in the South America, whose construction criteria and slope stability analysis contributed to the base of comparative model for the current procedures adopted in tailing dams projects demanded by ICOLD – International Committee on Large Dams.
