In a town hall meeting held by BHP, the City of Globe and the Town of Miami last Thursday, BHP unveiled plans for a project to reinforce the Solitude Tailings Facility south of Claypool – and a closely related endeavor that proposes to bring a new roundabout to Globe.

BHP will be constructing a buttress on the front of the tailings facility, and during the town hall company representatives shared project designs and timelines with the public. The buttress project’s goal, said BHP’s Sriram Ananthanarayan, is to improve the tailings’ resilience for stability during a 1-in-10,000-year seismic event. Though the facility is safe in current conditions, it could become unstable in the event of a catastrophic earthquake – a risk BHP plans to avoid.

The buttress, which is like a wall built of compacted dirt, is expected to provide more support and stability to the embankment slopes. It will be constructed with native Gila conglomerate. The project is anticipated to use more than three million cubic yards of dirt and 150,000 cubic yards of rock armoring, sourced from a local quarry. Modeled on a successfully applied cover system approach BHP has used at the Miami Unit Tailings, San Manuel Tailings and San Manuel Heap Leach Facility, the project’s landform/cover system design was four to five years in the making. Ananthanarayan said the project addresses only physical stability; a long-term closure plan and end site use for Solitude Tailings are still being studied.

He added that BHP had worked with Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center on road access to the project – which, it was determined after a traffic impact study and a pavement condition assessment, will be via Hospital Drive. That is where the second endeavor, geared toward traffic improvement, comes in. A roundabout, with a truck apron for the rock-hauling vehicles, is being proposed at Hospital Drive and Besich Boulevard. Ananthanarayan said it was an idea the hospital was considering before BHP’s involvement; and so the two came together.

Equipment for the buttress construction will start mobilizing at the end of May 2023, for what is anticipated to be a three-year project. Construction of the roundabout is tentatively scheduled to run from May 15 through August 31; during this time, there will be a temporary access road to the hospital.