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Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Is the Mosaic waste pile too big to fail?

The Mosaic mound of waste crisis is apparently over.  Although maybe someone can explain why this is the acceptable level of comfort.
The movement of the waste pile, which is about 185 feet tall and has its own nighttime warning lights for aircraft, had  raised worries early this year from state and federal regulators concerned about the integrity of a large lake inside the pile. The lake holds hundreds of millions of gallons of acidic and radioactive process water.

Regulators and the company now say the risk of a catastrophic failure and release of the water is minimal.

The movement of parts of the pile's north wall and the earth deep beneath that wall have slowed significantly after a series of emergency measures. The movement went from more than a half-inch per day to one-tenth to one-hundredth of an inch per day, on average, state reports show.
The fertilizer company had slowed production while "responding to" the wobbling wastewater lake which itself may present a problem because...
A halt in production affects the company's ability to manage the supply of the process water on site, company officials have previously said. Rainfall expands that supply while continued fertilizer production causes the water to evaporate.
Leave aside the question of whether or not it's good to just let the "acidic and radioactive" waste evaporate into the open air.  Are they telling us here that the only way to stave off environmental disaster is to make sure production doesn't shut down? 

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