Tailing Pond

a facility designed to receive and store tailings, or the refuse material resulting from the concentration of minerals. A tailing pond is usually built in a depression—for example, a gorge, a creek valley, or a basin—at a distance of several kilometers from a concentration plant. It is impounded by a dam, which is built up from the tailings, and is buttressed. In a tailing pond, tailings in the solid phase gradually settle out, sometimes with the aid of specially added agents, such as coagulants or flocculants. The clarified water is purified and then is either discharged into local basins or returned to the concentration plant for reuse.