Evaluation of the Tailings Dam, Cyanide Use and Water Consumption at the Proposed Volta Grande Gold Project, Pará, Northern Brazil Steven H. Emerman, Ph.D., Malach Consulting, LLC, 785 N 200 W, Spanish Fork, Utah 84660, USA, Tel: 1-801-921-1228, E-mail:
[email protected] Report written at the request of Amazon Watch, submitted June 1, 2020 LIGHTNING SUMMARY The proposed Volta Grande Gold Project includes a tailings dam along the banks of the Xingu River, a major tributary of the Amazon River in Pará, northern Brazil. The recycling of the cyanide leachate between the tailings reservoir and the ore processing plant has the potential to enrich the tailings water in antimony, arsenic and mercury. The dam has not been designed with any seismic safety criterion and with no study of local or regional seismicity. In the most- likely failure scenario, the initial runout of tailings would cover 41 kilometers with significant impact on the Arara de Volta Grande do Xingu indigenous land. ABSTRACT The Canadian company Belo Sun Mining has proposed the Volta Grande Gold Project, which would include the permanent storage of 35.43 million cubic meters of mine tailings and water behind a 44-meter high tailings dam along the banks of the Xingu River, a major tributary of the Amazon River in Pará, northern Brazil. The predicted water consumption is consistent with gold mining trends and would have little impact on the flow of the Xingu River. The water economy would be achieved by using the tailing reservoir to capture surface runoff, so that all tailings would be saturated and with seven meters of free water above the surface of the solid tailings.