The use of high strength woven geotextiles to provide reinforcement for sludge pond caps has been common practice for a number of years. To date the use of woven geotextiles to provide reinforcement for oil sands tailings pond closures has been limited. This paper presents a case history of the first large scale use of high strength woven geotextiles to cap an oil sands tailings pond filled with tailings. This high strength woven geotextile project is Canada's largest to date. The closure of an oil sands tailings pond differs from other pond capping operations due to the scale of the pond and the low bearing capacity of the soft tailings areas. The pond in this case history is approximately 2 by 3 kilometres in extent; much too large to cover with a single fabric panel. This pond closure required the creation of 13 kilometres of roads 100 m wide to create an access grid to enable covering of the remaining area. Building these roads required working in the winter in order to use the frozen surface of the pond for construction support. This paper covers the work and processes developed during construction of this grid of access roads in the winter of 2010.
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