{"id":24592,"date":"2017-07-07T07:16:18","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T07:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=24592"},"modified":"2017-07-07T07:16:18","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T07:16:18","slug":"mishor-rotem-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/07\/07\/mishor-rotem-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Mishor Rotem &#8211; another tailings dam failure, this time in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Mishor Rotem &#8211; another tailings dam failure, this time in Israel<\/h5>\n<p>Although it has not really made the news, a major tailings dam failure occurred at Mishor Rotem in Israel on Friday 30th June 2017.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-israel-environment-icl-idUSKBN19P1P6\"> Reuters has a detailed report about the event<\/a>:-<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Toxic wastewater that surged through a dry riverbed in southern Israel at the weekend left a wake of ecological destruction more than 20 km (12 miles) long.\u00a0 The flood began last Friday when the 60 meter (yard) high wall of a reservoir at a phosphate factory partially collapsed, letting loose 100,000 cubic meters (26.4 million gallons) of highly acidic wastewater in the Ashalim riverbed.\u00a0 That was enough fluid to fill 40 Olympic-sized pools.\u00a0 The toxic torrent snaked through the desert, singeing anything in its path, before collecting again hours later in a pool several kilometers from the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are various images of the failure, of which this is the best:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24597\" style=\"width: 625px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24597\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24597\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/07\/17_07-Mishor-1.jpg\" alt=\"Mishor Rotem\" width=\"615\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/07\/17_07-Mishor-1.jpg 615w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/07\/17_07-Mishor-1-300x171.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-24597\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The aftermath of the Mishor Rotem tailings dam failure in Israel on 30th June, via (the very odd!) <a href=\"http:\/\/strangesounds.org\/2017\/07\/toxic-tsunami-wastewater-israel-desert-video.html\">Strange Sounds<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>There is also a decent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=B-Dkm5ZHg28\">Youtube video<\/a> of the failure and its consequences downstream:-<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u05e7\u05e8\u05d9\u05e1\u05ea \u05d4\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05db\u05d4 \u05e9\u05dc \u05de\u05e4\u05e2\u05dc \u05e8\u05d5\u05ea\u05dd \u05e9\u05d2\u05e8\u05de\u05d4 \u05dc\u05d6\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05dd \u05e0\u05d7\u05dc \u05d0\u05e9\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B-Dkm5ZHg28?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/israel-news\/.premium-1.799225\">Haaretz has a decent article<\/a> on the implications of the failure, noting that the spill has damaged an area of important ecology.\u00a0 The tailings pond contains the waste from a fertiliser plant, owned by Rotem Amfert.<\/p>\n<p>One can only speculate about the cause of the failure, although a slip in the embankment does not seem to have occurred.\u00a0 Overtopping or( perhaps more probably) a piping failure seem to be the prime candidates.<\/p>\n<p>I have noted previously that the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/11\/06\/bento-rodrigues-1\/\">failure rate in tailings facilities is unacceptably high<\/a>.\u00a0 There would be no tolerance of this rate of failure in any other of geotechnical work, especially given the consequences of these major leaks downstream.\u00a0 I remain deeply frustrated that this problem is allowed to persist.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 30th June a major tailings dam failure occurred at Mishor Rotem in Israel, releasing 100,000 cubic metres of polluted sludge down a key watercourse<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":24597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6298],"tags":[71,490,469,6300,299,230],"class_list":["post-24592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tailings","tag-dam","tag-failure","tag-featured","tag-israel","tag-mine","tag-tailings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}