 Over its lifetime of production, the mine would generate about 44 million tons of waste.Half would be rocky "coarse tailings", which would be dumped to fill the mine shafts, while the other half would be powdery "fine tailings", which would be dumped into a waste pond equivalent to the size of 340 football fields with a plastic liner separating the tailings from the environment.Proposals by Kennecott Minerals Company to mine a metal sulfide deposit near Ladysmith, Wisconsin were initially rejected by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.