The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
On 15 September 2024, a mine waste storage facility at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district of Odisha in India failed, releasing mud and water onto surrounding farmland. According to news reports, the facility was operated by Vedanta. It stores “red mud” and water produces as waste from a bauxite mine and processing plant.
The failure at Lanjigarh was apparently triggered by heavy rainfall. Reporting of this incident has been scarce, although there have been calls for a judicial review of the event.
It is not easy to get a decent satellite image of this part of India at this time of year, but the Planet Labs image below shows a storage facility at the site (in the centre of the image) on 18 August 2024. Note the main mine site, and another mine waste storage facility, to the east:-
The location of the mine waste facility is [19.7021, 83.3804]. This is the same site on 29 September 2024:-
And here is an image compare of the site:-
It appears that the mine waste release occurred on the northern side of the facility in the centre of the image, with evidence of mud on the fields for a distance of about 300 metres, although it is possible that it extends further than this. It is difficult to ascertain how far polluted water has moved.
Fortunately, this failure appears to be quite limited in scale, and Vedanta has noted that production has been unaffected. Nonetheless, such a failure should not occur, and of course the local impact can be significant. As I have noted previously, the rate of failure of tailings facilities is too high given the enormous potential impact of such events.
Reference
Planet Team 2024. Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https://www.planet.com/
