Abstract
A deuterium tagged rainfall event with a δD of +213 was applied to the top surface of an experimental covered waste rock pile in May of 2003. The tracer experiment was designed to resolve the spatial variability of infiltrating water and to estimate the magnitude and rate of flow within covered waste rock. The five meter high pile was deconstructed one year later and waste rock was sampled along vertical profiles at 10cm increments. Pore waters were extracted from the waste rock using the centrifugal method. The measured δD values range from -90 to background levels of approximately -130 with a few zones of locally high δD values deeper than three meters in the pile. Variability between individual vertical δD profiles are observed within the 8x8 meter area. The combination of the spatial variability and the deep δD values yield strong evidence for intermediate scale (~15 cm) preferential flow.
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