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The major copper mines in Chile are located in the desert, where water resources are scarce. Therefore reuse as much water as possible from tailings dams is a very challenging task. In those facilities, water is lost by evaporation, infiltration, retention and rewet. From both an environmental and an economic perspective, the use of seawater either desalinated or not is an attractive alternative. This paper analyzed tailings consolidation to determine possible changes in saturated permeability, compressibility or pore pressure dissipation due to the salt content of seawater. For this purpose characterization, sedimentation, oedometric and saturated permeability tests were performed on tailings samples with different fines content, using both seawater and freshwater to establish a comparison.