This guideline has been issued to assist mining companies with the design of safety bunds required to minimise the potential risk to public safety of inadvertent access to abandoned open pits.
This guideline describes the geotechnical factors with greatest influence on the long-term stability of open pit slopes, and includes simple design criteria for the location and construction of safety bund walls. Whilst it is recognised that the controls on the stability of pit walls will be site specific, the design criteria provided represent a generalised, conservative approach for determining the location of long-term abandonment bunds in all open pits. The design information provided in this document is based on field measurements of failures and tension cracks around pit edges in operating and abandoned open pit gold mines in Western Australia.