Likely B.C.-  A  three member panel of mining and dam experts will  undertake the task  of trying to determine why the  tailings pond at  Mt. Polley  breached and  there  are no leading theories to  guide their work.

“I haven’t spoken to anyone, and I have spoken to everyone, who has a theory on why this dam  breached” says Mines Minister  Bill Bennett. “This shocked everyone, especially the engineers who were responsible for the dam” adds Bennett.

One of the panel members who will be looking for a cause of the breach, Dirk Van Zyl  from the UBC  mining engineering program, says there are no common causes for such a breach and there are no  valid statistics on  such breaches “They are all built differently it’s not a statistical data set that is  very uniform, but when you look at  statistics,  the likelihood of failure is very much the same as water  dams as well, so it’s in the order of one in  one million to  one in  one hundred thousand per dam year depending on how you  look at the statistics, so it is a very rare event and the  large failures like this, and the investigations of them, very often would come to conclusions that would say there could have been  two or three or four different ways of failure of a specific facility but  the most likely is this one.”

Van Zyl says the panel will focus on the technical matters “The failing of the tailings pond at Mount Polley was not only a dark day for mining in B.C, but worldwide” he adds “I can assure you the investigation will be through and rigorous.”

The panel   is required to  submit its report  by January 31st, 2015.