MULBERRY, Fla. -- Mosaic says it has completed the huge task of repairing the massive sinkhole in Mulberry.
- Mosaic sinkhole repair status
- Sinkhole opened in Aug. 2016
- Fix required thousands of work repair hours, $84 million in costs
The sinkhole opened underneath a gypsum stack at the company's New Wales phosphate mining facility in August 2016.
Now, after thousands of work repair hours and $84 million in costs, Mosaic says the job is complete and is giving media members a tour of the repairs.
Workers at the New Wales plant off Highway 640 discovered the sinkhole.
Mosaic moved more than 780,000 cubic yards of material, drilled more than six dozen holes and placed approximately 20,000 cubic yards of grout involving more than 350,000 hours of site work. The work took longer than expected in part due to thunderstorms in the area last year.
"Recognizing that because of the lightning and thunderstorms, we had these big cranes and equipment and it was unsafe for some people to doing that work," said Mosaic's David Jellerson.
The gaping hole sent hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated water into an aquifer.
Mosaic officials took reporters to the top of the gypsum stack to show how plugging the sinkhole was completed, using 20,000 yards of a special grout pumped in from a number of different directions.
Mosaic has installed monitoring equipment to monitor the fix.
"Well we have continuous monitoring which we have installed," Mosaic officials said of the fix. "So we have collapse monitors and we have deep piezometers.
"Vibrating wire piezometers which we have installed in the confining unit and gypsum stack. Those will be operating continuously."
The company said it remains confident because groundwater testing has revealed no contaminated nearby wells.
Mosaic will continue groundwater recovery and monitoring as well as residential well sampling. The company said it will still deliver bottled water to a few nearby residents who have concerns about well water.