Thank you for your well wordsmithed response Sullym, you are obviously from a legal background. You don't seem to have any marine biological research to back your nice sounding words, but I gather that biology would not be your expertise.
You state that "Deep sea tailings placement has been used successfully for decades now". Studies have/are been done on this matter and your conclusion is far from proven.
I will simply post here some research (there is lots of it) and reference its source and bid goodbye to the KSN threads...
The waste materials from DSTD consist of a slurry of predominantly finely-crushed rock materials, formed after the mineralized material has been processed. This material contains mud, silt and sand, water, low concentrations of targeted minerals (e.g., gold, copper, and silver), and measureable concentrations of other metals such as arsenic, cobalt, nickel, mercury, lead, zinc, as well as processing wastes such as sodium cyanide, lime and other acids (Ramirez-Llodra et al., 2015)....although these discharged tailings are expected to be permanently deposited in a deep-water environment, the potential for plume dispersal and tailing resuspension, and the consequences for the marine ecosystem in the water column and on the seafloor are uncertain over long time scales.
Deep-sea organisms may differ from those in shallow water in having slower growth rates, greater longevity, and less exposure to disturbance or variable environmental conditions, increasing their vulnerability to the changes related to tailings disposal. The benthic marine fauna can be impacted in a number of different ways by discharged tailings. The deposited material can kill the organisms directly through smothering and asphyxiation, through contact or poisoning via ingestion or exposure to water-dissolved substances. Mortality can also occur through the destruction of sensitive juveniles and through the killing of prey organisms (Brewer et al., 2007; Shimmield et al., 2010; Reichelt-Brushett, 2012). Benthic fauna at the disposal site and in the vicinity of the plume may bioaccumulate metals from tailings porewater and ingestion of sediment (Rainbow, 2007; Casado-Martinez et al., 2010; Campana et al., 2012). These impacts can lead to ecosystem-level changes.
Where mine tailings have been disposed, shifts in meiofaunal and macrofaunal community structure have been observed, with reduced biodiversity (e.g., Lee and Correa, 2005; Shimmield et al., 2010; Hughes et al., 2015); these effects on the environment can last several years after tailings disposal has ceased.
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