Tailings Management

To prevent these materials from contaminating rivers, groundwater, and surrounding ecosystems, they are stored in specially engineered containment structures called Tailings Storage Facilities (TSFs). These facilities are designed to keep tailings secure and to protect people, wildlife, and water resources.

Historically, most TSFs have stored wet tailings—a slurry of water and fine particles—which pose a higher risk of structural failure and catastrophic flooding. To reduce this risk, the industry is increasingly adopting dry stack tailings, where tailings are dewatered and compacted, making them more stable and significantly less hazardous.

TSF failures can have severe impacts, releasing large volumes of water, causing very significant environmental contamination, property destruction, and potential loss of life. Past failures worldwide have underscored the catastrophic impacts of poor design and oversight. Today, effective tailings management is more critical than ever, driven by the growing scale of mining operations, climate-related challenges, and heightened expectations from regulators, investors, and communities for transparency and safety.

At ArcelorMittal, tailings dam safety and structural integrity are critical and material issues, essential to protecting the safety of our local communities and employees and safeguarding the environment from pollution and flooding. Our aim is to ensure all our TSFs are structurally sound and safe, through rigorous risk assessment, independent audits and reviews benchmarked against international guidelines and comprehensive tailings monitoring procedures and action plans.

ArcelorMittal applies the best industry standards to our tailings facilities to ensure sustainability across our mining practices. Tailings dam safety and structural integrity are critical and material issues.

We have several TSFs, including dry stack and in-pit disposal, at both active and dormant stages.

As part of our ongoing safety programme, tailings specialists are embedded within operations, and all TSFs have emergency response procedures activated by Trigger Action Response Plans (TARPs). We have been reviewing these response plans across all sites to ensure they are aligned with the international best practice standards.

This work is supported by a continuous improvement programme that promotes reduced moisture disposal methodologies, which improve the structural integrity of tailings dams, (e.g. high-density thickened tailings or filtered tailings where appropriate). It also leverages proven new technologies to monitor facilities globally in real time. We have upgraded our internal monitoring infrastructure by deploying iSMART, an internally developed cloud-based TSF data-monitoring system, involving real-time monitoring technologies such as such as piezometers and inclinometers that measure deformation, and remote monitoring technologies like InSAR satellite imaging.