Page 4 - Jagersfontein Developments News Today

At least one person died, hundreds were displaced and livestock washed away when a mine tailings dam burst and Jagersfontein was flooded. The key players say it's too early to apportion blame.

With mop-up operations under way after the Jagersfontein tailings dam disaster in the Free State, the department of mineral resources & energy wants to revisit a 2007 court judgment that excludes it from monitoring tailings dams.

"For the bigger dams, the bigger water schemes and so forth are usually very well designed, which is a good starting point. They are not likely to fail rapidly and unexpectedly unless you have a really massive flood."

“I just heard woo woo woo sounds. We did not have time to ask questions. We just left everything and ran.”

(Reuters) - A South African company is dumping the sludgy byproduct of mining into a historical diamond pit after the tailings dam that had stored the waste partially collapsed, killing one and leaving scores injured.

Gwede Mantashe says a high court judgment from 2009 that left the DMRE without jurisdiction over all tailings dams was a dangerous mistake.

The disaster in Jagersfontein, triggered by the collapse of a tailings dam, has put the mining industry’s environmental and safety record into focus.

Rather than clean up their mess mining companies tended to ‘pass the parcel’

The company’s legal compliance officer Marius de Villiers said they are hopeful that an investigation into the incident will provide more details on the dam collapse in Jagersfontein.

On Sunday, hundreds of residents in the small Free State town had their homes flooded when a slimes dam wall collapsed at a local mine.