The sinkhole that swallowed 215 million gallons of radioactive water is now in the process of getting filled.
It’s been roughly six months since the toxic sinkhole opened up at Mosaic’s New Wales plant in Mulberry.
Since then, workers and contractors have been trying to figure out the best way to stabilize and fill the hole.
Video taken from Action Air One Friday morning shows a built-up ring around the hole for people to safely work.
As of Wednesday of this week, workers finally started pumping in a concrete-like mixture to fill the hole.
“It’s like of live and let live,” said Joyce Hunter, who lives a couple miles from the plant and is one of the hundreds of neighbors living from water test to water test.
They are just praying the radioactive water that got sucked into the hole doesn’t reach their private wells.
So far that nasty water has not left Mosaic’s property according to the company and state officials.
“I don’t drink with the water, I don’t cook with the water, I use bottled water all together. I do shower in the water and I will probably start to glow one day,” Hunter said.
Her well test came back clean shortly after the disaster, but she’s waiting for the testing company to come back for round two.
The state ordered Mosaic to keep testing the wells every quarter this year and twice in 2018.
Meanwhile, the company has its hands full at ground zero.
Mosaic basically built a concrete plant near the hole so it can keep pumping roughly seven Olympic swimming pools worth of concrete into the hole.
That’s just for the initial, “stabilizing phase” according to a Mosaic spokesperson.
The company plans to finish this work by the start of the rainy season in Florida.
