Limestone Tailings Disposal Facility

The owner operates a limestone mining quarry and cement plant in Brooksville, Florida.  The quarry site includes a limestone tailings disposal facility.   The current facility was approaching its full capacity in 2005.  Ardaman, as the prime design engineer, worked to retrofit the current containment dike to increase the life of the facility during the construction of the new disposal facility and designed a new facility to handle the anticipated production for an additional 10 years of service.  The new disposal facility included a design for an 80-foot high earthen containment dike along with spillways and floating pump. 

Ardaman’s scope of work included performing the following tasks: 

• Field investigation programs to collect samples of the foundation soils and the borrow materials
• Limestone tailings sampling using a piston sampler from an airboat
• Piezometers installation and field permeability tests
• Laboratory testing programs to obtain design parameters for the foundation soils, tailings materials and borrow soils
• Basic engineering design and sizing of the new disposal facility
• Detailed design construction drawings and specifications for the containment dike and spillways between compartments
• Tailings Disposal and Operation Plan for the facility
• Quality Control Testing and Inspection during construction
• Post Construction monitoring plan