it looks like it may have been a shit happens event instead of a finger pointing one, maybe not such a bad hit to the industry who were the geotecks?
UPDATE 1-Investigation finds flawed design caused Canada mine dam spill1 hour ago by Thomson Reuters
(Adds details on spill's cause, panel recommendations)
VANCOUVER, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A massive spill from a dam containing mine waste in British Columbia in August was caused by a flawed design for the embankment, which did not account for the presence of a glacial lake deposit in the foundation, an independent panel said on Friday.
The probe by a three-member engineering panel found that the breach, which sent billions of gallons of wastewater and sludge coursing into fish-bearing waterways, happened because the dam's weight was too much for the foundation to bear.
"We concluded the dominant contribution to the failure resides in the design," the panel's chair, Norbert Morgenstern, said at a news conference on the 5-1/2-month investigation.
"The design did not take into account the complexity of the sub-glacial and pre-glacial geological environment associated with the perimeter embankment foundation," he said.
Shares of the mine's owner, Vancouver-based Imperial Metals Inc, were up 9.48 percent at C$9.24 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock plunged more than 46 percent the day after the Aug. 4, 2014 disaster and hit a near five-year low of C$7.30 in December.
The panel, appointed by the provincial government with the backing of two Aboriginal bands from the Mount Polley area, also found that the failure was triggered by the construction of a downstream rockfill zone at an overly steep slope.
They concluded that had the slope been flattened, work under way when the accident happened, the failure could have been averted.
