What is also important to note is that the main issue for the Polley mine tailing pond was that water input, due to high precititation rates, was greater than the outflow.

This made me think about the effects of climate change. It is obvious to most of us that the weather has been getting more extreme these last few years. Look at Burlington, they just got two months worth of rain in a night.

How do these older mines cope with the new reality? I'm not sure it is possible to look at past weather patterns and assume it will go forward the same.

Anyway, I'm sure engineers everywhere are keen to see what happened in this particular case and incorporate the knowledge into their design.