{"id":26071,"date":"2017-10-31T07:38:19","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T07:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=26071"},"modified":"2017-10-31T07:38:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T07:38:19","slug":"mishor-rotem-tailings-dam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/10\/31\/mishor-rotem-tailings-dam\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet Labs imagery of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Planet Labs imagery of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure<\/h4>\n

Back in early July I blogged about yet another tailings dam failure<\/a>, this time at the Mishor Rotem facility in Israel.\u00a0 I have seen remarkably little about the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure since – far less than for many other tailings dam events.\u00a0 Lindsay Newland Bowker has an article on her blog about it<\/a> that includes this photograph of the failure:<\/p>\n

\"Mishor

A photograph of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure, via Lindsay Newland Bowker and REUTERS\/Baz Ratner<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

She reports that 100,000 m\u00b3 of tailings were released in the collapse event, flowing 20 km down the Ashalim riverbed. This is a Planet Labs satellite image<\/a> of the site captured the day before the failure:-<\/p>\n

\"Mishor

Planet Labs image<\/a> of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure site,collected on 30th June 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The tailings pond that suffered the failure can be clearly seen in the lower central part of the image.\u00a0 Compare that with this image, taken on 1st July:-<\/p>\n

\"Mishor

Planet Labs image<\/a> of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure, collected on 1st July 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The breach in the dam wall is clearly visible, as is the spilt material.\u00a0 Note the trail of waste in the river bed in the northeast corner of the image.\u00a0 A clearer view of the breach is visible in this more recent Planet Labs image:<\/p>\n

\"Mishor

Planet Labs image<\/a> of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure, collected on 25th October 2017<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The trail of environmental damage left by the tailings dam failure can be clearly seen in this Planet Labs image<\/a>, collected on 2nd July 2017:<\/p>\n

\"Mishor

The trail of environmental damage caused by the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure. Image by Planet Labs<\/a> on 2nd July 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see if there is transparency in terms of the investigation of this tailings dam failure, in the way that there has been for other recent events<\/a>.\u00a0 Given the frequency of these events (this listing makes for dreadful reading<\/a>), it is important that each event is analysed and that the lessons are shared.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2017). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA.\u00a0https:\/\/api.planet.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is good imagery available via Planet Labs showing the 100,000 cubic metre Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure in Israel in June 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":26073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6298],"tags":[469,903,907,205,230,1022],"class_list":["post-26071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tailings","tag-featured","tag-isreal","tag-middle-east","tag-mining","tag-tailings","tag-tailings-dam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}