A large landslide last week at Kennecott Utah’s Bingham Canyon copper mine has stopped poduction and could result in furloughs or layoffs. The landslide occured on April 10, 2013 at around 9:30 pm in the northeast pit wall. The slide had been actively monitored for some time, and prior to the failure, the rate of movement did increase significantly and all employees were safely evacuated. No word on volume estimates at this point, but the flow of ore has stopped until the cleanup has taken place. Work resumed in another part of the mine, but that involved removing overburden material. [Source: Deseret News. Image: Ravell Call, Deseret News]
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SR 87 Landslide Coverage and Update
Back in March of 2008 there was a landslide that closed SR 87 in between Phoenix, Arizona and Payson. It’s been of great interest to me since it is in my state and affected a highway. I was hoping my firm (NCS Consultants, LLC) might be asked to work on the remediation through our on-call contract but it didn’t happen. Its probably for the best, it sounds like it’s been a troublesome geotechnical engineering problem. Fast forward to last week, and the slide area was in the news again because the slope is still moving and apparently causing some additional deformation of the roadway. (Photo by ADOT)
I had heard about this a while ago through our ADOT contacts, but I make it a policy not to take advantage of my contacts through my day job for GeoPrac.net content (not without permission anyway). So I didn’t want to blog about it until it hit the mainstream media. Last week, the Arizona State Geologist blogged about the SR 87 slide moving again, as did Ken through his AEG Arizona Section blog. It was even covered on one of my favorite blogs, Dave’s Landslide Blog. I finally have a chance to wade through these blog posts and some of the reports and videos to present a summary of the situation, available information and offer my own perspective. (More after the break)