Racing the devil: Kennecott kept quiet while fixing dangerous dam

Tribune Editorial

Article Last Updated: 03/27/2008 05:22:27 PM MDT

Store a mountain of mine tailings behind an earthen embankment that hovers over homes. Saturate with water, trapped by an impermeable base. Shake vigorously in an earthquake until the sopping wet waste liquefies – think milkshake – and exerts tremendous pressure on the base of the dam. And then run, really fast.
What you have is a recipe for disaster. If the dam breaks, it will unleash an avalanche of viscous mine sludge that consumes everything in its path.
That’s the scenario that residents of Green Meadows Estates, an enclave of more than 200 homes on the outskirts of Magna, unknowingly and unnecessarily faced for years, thanks to collusion between a cold, callous, calculating company, and an uncaring and seemingly incompetent state agency.
Kennecott Utah Copper Corp., according to a confidential self-investigation conducted by the company in 1997 and obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, became aware of the danger posed by its tailings pond as early as 1957 in a report issued by Arthur Casarande, known as the “father of soil mechanics.” Subsequent reports commissioned by the company in 1966, 1974 and 1983 also raised the potential of dam failure, and the susceptibility of the mine tailings to liquefaction.
By 1988, when a definitive study was commissioned by Kennecott as it considered expanding the then-82-year-old tailings pond, the picture became crystal clear. When the big one hits, consulting engineers said, the impoundment would likely fail, burying homes in Green Meadows.
But instead of notifying the community of the danger, as recommended by attorneys who warned of punitive damages and criminal liability if lives were lost and property damaged, Kennecott kept it quiet.
Hoping to avoid “panic and (law)suits,” then-company president Frank Joklik orchestrated a cover-up, a cover-up made possible by state regulators who lost sight of their mandate to protect the public, and kept their lips zipped and their fingers crossed as hazard mitigation efforts ensued.
State dam safety officials were briefed on the problem as early as 1989. According to the company’s internal investigation, a state official assured Kennecott that he had no intention of “going public” with the dangers, and, to circumvent open records laws, advised the company to withhold from the state any and all written records it didn’t want the public to see.
Its secret safe, the copper company began clandestinely buying up homes in Green Meadows and leaving them vacant in an attempt to establish a buffer zone. Unconscionably, the homes were later resold to unknowing buyers in the mid-1990s.
Kennecott also ordered an actuarial study to determine the costs of a breach, a study that callously affixed a dollar figure to residents’ lives. And it launched a project to replace, stabilize and dewater the tailings pond, hopefully before an earthquake struck.
Kennecott, it appears, won its race with the devil. And Green Meadows residents, who could have moved to safety had they been warned, apparently dodged a mudslide.
In the past two decades the company has replaced the tailings pond with a modern impoundment, and spent $13 million to strengthen and dewater the old pond, and shield residential areas with berms, in an ongoing stabilization project that will last another 10 years. According to company studies that have been reviewed and accepted as gospel by the state despite the company’s penchant for hiding the truth, only a small area on the southeast corner of the old tailings pond falls short of state earthquake standards, a problem that will soon be remedied.
So, no harm, no foul. Amazingly, that’s the analysis offered by David Marble, current chief of the state Dam Safety Office and the man in charge of protecting you from unsafe dams.
Marble praised Kennecott for working closely with the state to devise and implement an effective hazard mitigation program. He defended the state for not revealing the danger for all these years, noting public notification is the responsibility of the dam owner under state statutes. He questioned whether public notification was even required because the threat of a dam failure from an earthquake does not meet his dictionary’s definition of an “emergency.” And he said the state is not required to inspect tailings ponds that have been drained of surface water and are not in current use, regardless of the residual danger they may pose.
Kennecott officials are more humble than Marble. The company has apologized for the previous owners’ past practices, and promises that things would be handled differently today. But the apology rings hollow because The Tribune, not the company, disclosed the past and present danger.
So what should happen now?
Kennecott attorneys had warned of criminal liability if the company failed to reveal the danger. That indicates an investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office is warranted.
The state Legislature needs to update dam safety statutes to provide for the ongoing inspection of unused tailings ponds, to require public notification if a dam is susceptible to an earthquake-related failure, and to designate the Dam Safety Office, not dam owners, as the party responsible for issuing warnings.
And the Dam Safety Office needs to conduct its own study, or commission an independent third-party study, to determine if the old tailings pond is safe, instead of relying on the company’s data. After all, Kennecott already fooled us once.