February 8, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada – Three specialists from Knight Piésold Canada delivered keynote presentations at the International Symposium on Tailings and Water Management held on January 29 and 31 in Ecuador. The symposium covered six themes designed to provide information regarding modern tailings design and management to support Ecuador’s nascent mining sector.

Speakers included Chris Brodie, environmental services manager, Daniel Yang, specialist geotechnical engineer, and Antonio Sotil, senior engineer, providing best practice principles and case studies on the design, management, environmental assessment, and closure of tailings facilities.

On January 29, over 600 people attended the symposium, which was hosted by the Central University of Ecuador in Quito, including senior representatives of the Ministry of Mining and the Ministry of the Environment, as well as professors, students, and the press. A capacity crowd of 400 people attended the second presentation on January 31 to interested community members of the city of Zamora in southern Ecuador. EcuaCorriente S.A., the proponents of the Mirador Mine, sponsored the symposium with coordination from the Association of Mining Engineers of Ecuador and the Ecuadorian Chamber of Mines.

Knight Piésold has been involved in mine waste and water management studies for the Mirador Mine since 2002 and continues to provide support to EcuaCorriente. The Mirador Mine, a copper mine located approximately 90 km northeast of Zamora, is among the projects in Ecuador’s emerging mining sector. Several major foreign miners have invested in Ecuadorian mineral developments recently and the government is aiming to increase the mineral industry’s contribution to the GDP from 1.6% in 2018 to 4% by 2021.