- respinoza@lickanspa.cl
- +569 999333072
Environmental, water and tailings engineering for the mining of the future
Over 32 years bringing water, tailings and land together in large-scale mining in Chile and Argentina: from conventional to filtered tailings, from seawater pumped up the Andes to water recovered at the plant, from environmental liability to productive restoration.
SMA
Verify certification ›
Lickan's second pillar: water, tailings and land
Lickan SpA was founded in 2015 doing what the rest of this site shows: earthworks, mine roads and large-scale construction. But long before that, and in parallel, the same career ran through Codelco's concentrate filter plants, Barrick's tailings dams at 4,300 m, the water balances of desert operations, environmental certification before the SEA and an agroecological reserve in the Atacama. This page brings that second line of work together and organizes it around a single idea.
Three pressures converge on that answer and run through the seven sections that follow: the water ladder is reaching saturation, ore grades are falling (more tailings and more water per tonne of copper) and the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management has arrived, with DS 248 in Chile. Filtered tailings address all three at once. Everything else — permits, hydrology, closure, restoration — is what makes that answer legal, measurable and lasting.
For operations
How to return more water to the process and lower the consequence classification of the facility, with numbers an auditor can follow.
For projects
How to size, tender and compare a tailings filter plant on a common basis, from the test with real samples to the performance guarantee.
For regulators
How to enter the SEIA through the right door, comply with the RCA and prepare for the third-party certification coming with the GTMI and the Consolidated Standard.
AThe context: why filtered tailings, why now
Three figures explain the moment. None of them are Lickan's; all three are public and verifiable.
That is what a cubic metre of seawater costs delivered at the mine, at 1,700–2,800 m elevation. Desalination is only 31 % of the energy; 55 % is the lift. Water recovered at the filter plant is already up there: nothing has to be pumped.
For every tonne of copper there is now 82 % more rock, more tailings and more water to manage, and a finer, more clay-rich ore that is harder to filter and more dangerous to deposit wet (Consejo Minero).
New desalination capacity is bought in blocks of hundreds of litres per second, with years of permitting. Every litre recovered from tailings is a litre of ladder that does not need to be built (Cochilco).
BGISTM and what's next: GTMI, DS 248 and the Consolidated Mining Standard
The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) was written after the Brumadinho failure (2019) by ICMM, UNEP and the Principles for Responsible Investment. Its goal is zero harm to people and the environment. It is not a guideline: ICMM members have committed to it, and banks and insurers now require it as well. In Chile the same logic sits under SERNAGEOMIN's DS 248.
What's next 1 · GTMI
The Global Tailings Management Institute is the independent institute created by ICMM, UNEP and PRI to assess GISTM implementation. It launched in January 2025; in February 2026 it appointed its first CEO and its Technical Committee. It is building the assurance framework, the register of independent auditors and the certification process. In practice: conformance will stop being self-declared and will be certified by third parties.
What's next 2 · Consolidated Mining Standard
It merges the standards of ICMM, the Mining Association of Canada, The Copper Mark and the World Gold Council: 24 Performance Areas across three levels (foundational, good and leading practice). Area 21 is Tailings Management and refers to GISTM; 18 is Water Stewardship, 23 Circular Economy and 24 Closure. Final consultation report: March 2026; implementation expected from the second half of 2026, across some 100 companies and 600 sites.
What Lickan offers
- GISTM / DS 248 gap assessment by facility and a roadmap to certifiable conformance.
- Support to the Engineer of Record (EoR) and the RTFE: knowledge base, design criteria, consequence classification and credible failure scenarios.
- Construction and raising of tailings facilities under GISTM: contact and non-contact water, seepage control, geosynthetics.
- Geotechnical instrumentation and remote monitoring (piezometers, inclinometers, weather stations, IoT/LoRaWAN) and TARP protocols.
- Preparation for Area 21 of the Consolidated Standard and for the public disclosure both standards require.
CWater recycling and recovery to process
In a conventional facility in the Atacama Desert, of all the water arriving with the tailings, about a quarter evaporates on the beach and pond or seeps away, half is trapped in tailings that consolidate over years, and only a quarter returns to the process. With filtered tailings the cake leaves at 80 % solids and there is no pond: about two thirds of the water returns to the plant, and it returns at the top of the ladder.
Filtrate produced by the plant
This is the number that sizes the equipment: filters, pumps, launders, tanks and the return line. The performance guarantee is written against this number.
Fresh water no longer purchased
Lower, because the existing facility already returns 25 % through decant. This is the number that carries the economics: 11.1 million m³ a year, on the order of US$ 66 million a year in avoided desalinated water, before counting capital.
Two different numbers answering two different questions. Confusing them is the fastest way to lose credibility with a mining client.
- Site and tailings facility water balances, with an explicit distinction between filtrate produced and fresh water avoided.
- Decant ponds and lagoons, clear-water recirculation, seepage collection, contact and non-contact water.
- Desalination and conveyance: pre-treatment (coagulation, DAF, multimedia and disc filtration, ultrafiltration), reverse osmosis and SDI control; the real cost of the ladder (pumping, pipelines, substations).
- Solar settling ponds for heavy-metal removal from well water.
- Specific energy of recovered water (kWh per m³) measured against desalination, not claimed.
DTailings filtration: from concentrate to dry stacking
This is the specialty that sets Lickan apart, and it is told in three stages: thirty years of the same engineering applied to a material that keeps getting finer and far larger in volume.
Where it comes from: concentrate filtration with Larox for Codelco
Project & Engineering Manager for South America at Larox: concentrate filtration expansion projects at Chuquicamata, Andina and Coloso (Escondida). Calculations, pilot tests, final design of the filter plants, pumps and piping, and thickener optimization to reach 8 % final moisture.
The DMH file: a filter plant to recover water from tailings
Codelco Ministro Hales Division (Calama, 2,800 m a.s.l.), under a BOT scheme. Requirement: flotation tailings at 50 % solids, 600 t/h of dry solids nominal and 714 t/h maximum. Reference sizing: 4 large-format filter presses of 992 m² each, 8-minute cycle, cake at 85 % solids and about 590 m³/h of filtrate returned to the process.
Evaluation of three manufacturers on the same calculation basis, technical visit with Codelco to an operating plant in Arkansas (USA), bidding documents for a private international tender with 20,000 m³/day prequalification and filtration tests with real tailings, and the associated civil works (building, earthworks, geosynthetics, CAPEX and OPEX).
The model and the benchmark
All the sizing reports in the file, rebuilt into a single calculation model on a common basis, to compare five machines line by line. Applied to a large-scale copper case study (100 % filtration: 1.23 m³/s of slurry, 3,859 t/h of solids, 56 % w/w) and to the factory technical review of an Asian filter press manufacturer, September 2026.
What the model shows: plant size is set by the cycle, not the area; difficulty is set by the fines (almost half the mass below 45 µm), not the tonnage; and no offer is comparable without correcting for altitude. That is why testing on real samples is not a formality: it is the only place the numbers backing a guarantee can come from.
- Engineering and tendering of tailings filter plants: design basis, specifications, international bidding documents, bid evaluation and civil works.
- Independent benchmarking of European and Asian manufacturers on a common, auditable basis.
- Filtration test protocol on real samples and factory measurements (timed cycles, air and power consumption).
- Transition from conventional or thickened tailings to filtered, stacked tailings; design of the stack and its friction geometry.
- An Engineer of Record able to sign under the Chilean system for the resulting facility.
ESEA / SMA environmental certification and permitting
SEA/SMA Certified Environmental Consultant, Cert. No. 43-25. Guiding the project before the authorities from the very first question — do I need to enter the SEIA? — through to RCA compliance.
- SEIA entry relevance consultations (Law 19,300 and Supreme Decree 40/2012): analysis of article 10 project types, justification for non-entry and complete file.
- Environmental Impact Declarations and Studies (DIA / EIA), responses to ICSARA and follow-up through to the RCA.
- Sectoral environmental permits (PAS) and management of commitments before SMA, SEA, SERNAGEOMIN, DGA and DOH.
- Mine closure plans (Law 20,551) consistent with the RCA; early closure works executed on site.
- ESG strategies and preparation for the public disclosure required by GISTM and the Consolidated Standard.
Case
Diagnosis and environmental regularization strategy for a bottled-water agribusiness project in the Coquimbo Region whose relevance consultation had been declared inadmissible: definition of the correct processing route (new relevance consultation or DIA) and of the missing baseline studies.
FHydrology, hydraulics and watershed modelling
- Watershed hydrography and geomorphology; critical flows and floods; hydraulic and hydrological modelling with HEC-RAS / GeoRAS; basin-scale water balance and allocation with WEAP and SPHY.
- River training works, diversion channels and flood defences; 18 hydraulic improvement works for the DOH in Alto Loa and San Pedro de Atacama, including a reservoir in Solor.
- Hydrogeology: salt-flat aquifers under extraction, pumping tests, water-level monitoring and well depletion.
GAgroecology and restoration in arid lands
The same water engineering, applied to bringing productivity back to a piece of desert.
Private reserve in the Atacama Desert
native trees produced and donated every year
technified irrigation and water treatment powered by solar energy
HIoT systems and LoRaWAN networks: data where there is no network or power
Everything above — the water balance, the consequence classification, the guarantee of a filter plant — depends on measurements. A tailings facility, a leach pad or a well in the desert is usually kilometres from the control room, with no cellular coverage or power available. LoRaWAN is the network built for that place: battery sensors that last for years, links of several kilometres in open terrain, a gateway that gathers hundreds of points and a platform that turns readings into alerts.
Where it applies
- Tailings facilities (GISTM / DS 248): piezometers, inclinometers, GNSS displacement on the embankment, seepage flow, pond level and weather station, with thresholds and TARP protocols.
- Filter plant and water recycling: cake moisture, cycle pressure, filtrate clarity and turbidity, flow and density in tailings lines, pipeline integrity and quality of recovered water.
- Leach pads and ponds: level, geomembrane leak detection and drainage flows.
- Hydrology and agroecology: well level and depletion, flow gauging, soil moisture, technified irrigation and solar output at off-grid sites.
What Lickan offers
- Instrumentation network design: what to measure, where, how often and with what threshold, based on the facility's failure scenarios.
- LoRaWAN network engineering: coverage, gateway siting, solar power, communications back-up (4G, satellite) and cybersecurity.
- Instrumentation that grows with the embankment: incremental nesting of sensors at each raise, without redesigning the network (chapter 3 of Lickan's technical series).
- Integration with the facility management system: knowledge base, digital twin, dashboards and performance reports for the EoR and public disclosure.
- Brand-independent specification and tendering of sensors and platform.
What backs each section
Fresh water no longer purchased with 100 % filtration at a large-scale copper operation: 11.1 million m³ a year and some US$ 218 million of water ladder that does not need to be built. Lickan study, 2026.
Filter plant to recover water from tailings at Codelco DMH (2016–2019): 600 t/h of solids, cake at 85 %, ~590 m³/h returned to the process at 2,800 m elevation.
Tailings storage facilities under construction to GISTM — Vicuña megaproject, BHP–Lundin Mining JV (Fluor, 2026).
Raise of the Talabre tailings dam (Codelco): +10 m crest with cycloned sand, stages III and IV.
Tambo tailings dam (Barrick, El Indio) at 4,300 m, with geotextile, geonet and geomembrane; Baños del Toro decant pond; El Indio and Pastos Largos raises.
Concentrate filtration expansion for Codelco (Chuquicamata, Andina and Coloso) with Larox: pilot tests, final design, pumps and piping.
Surfaces lined with geosynthetics in heaps, ponds and tailings dams: Albemarle (2,200,000 m²), Caserones, Lomas Bayas, Pascua Lama, Tambo, Pastos Largos, among others.
DOH hydraulic improvement works in Alto Loa and San Pedro de Atacama, including a reservoir in Solor.
Original research, with DOI
Technical series «The golden ratio and the geometry of friction» (2026), deposited in Zenodo and linked to ORCID profile 0009-0008-0052-1304. Chapter 2, on slurry rheology and the hydrocyclone vortex, is the basis of the argument in section D: two variables — solids concentration and fines — decide at once how the slurry flows and how the cake forms in the filter.
View on ORCID / ZenodoHow much water is your facility losing?
An honest water balance and a GISTM / DS 248 gap assessment are the first step. Write to us and we will tell you, with numbers, where to start.
Engineering and consulting solutions for the mining industry, integrating technical expertise, operational experience and a commitment to sustainable development.