Alan Fair and Al Hyndman in the second part of their keynote presentation describe the tailings management and reclamation research through the 1970's and 1980's.
Dam safety was and continues to be a primary focus of oil sands tailings management. A wide range of management and monitoring practices were adopted to ensure that the growing volumes of fluid fine tailings could be contained while research on methods to separate fine clay from water continued.
Pit lake research began in the 1980's and composite tailings were the focus of 1990's research.
Throughout these decades, treatment technologies research was paid for by oil sands companies.
Getting fine clay to settle from water and converting tailings ponds to reclaimed land was proving to be a complex problem.
Alan Fair recently retired from the Oil Sands Tailings Consortium and Al Hyndman has many years experience in all aspects of oils sands development and tailings management. Al Hyndman gave Alan Fair's keynote presentation at the Oil Sands Tailings 2014 conference at Lake Louise, Dec. 8, 2014.