Peter Lighthall Full Interview

Geotechnical engineer Peter Lighthall is a third-generation civil engineer who studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1971. His first job, for BC mining firm Placer Development, involved construction of a tailings dam to impound mine waste for a new mining operation. Earle Klohn, principal of the firm Klohn and Leonoff, was the principal designer. Two and a half years later, Lighthall was hired by Klohn and Leonoff, where worked on a number of overseas projects, in Kuwait, Maine, Poland, Minnesota, Utah, the Soviet Union, New Guinea, Chile, Peru, . He then spent a year earning a diploma from Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, and a Masters degree from the University of London. He returned to work and the Klohn and Leonoff head office in Richmond, and by the mid '80s was Manager of their Mining Division. In 1995, he moved to AGRA Earth & Environmental, and in 2008, after "retiring" he took his first job as an independent consultant. He describes various techniques used to construct tailings dams, including some that created dangerous structures, and recounts serious failures in British Columbia, and Brazil between 2014 and 2019 that caused widespread environmental destruction and human fatalities. He also advises new graduate Engineers in Training to "get out in the field, to see how things really work."