[ryanmercer]

>Saudi Arabia emits 31.5 million cubic meters of liquid effluent a day

You'd need some massive pits and you'd have to displace way more than 31.5 million cubic meters of soil as it isn't all going to evaporate in a day. Ideally you'd want really shallow pools so you'd eat up an insane surface area.

For some reference an Olympic sized swimming pool is about 2,500 cubic meters so you'd need 12,600 (pools) just to hold one day worth of the contaminated water.

For a fun little compassion (that amuses me and might someone else) it is estimated that all of the silver ever mined adds up to about 166,375 cubic meters Source: https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-silver-has-been-found-wor...

And only about 8000 cubic meters of gold has been mined. Source: https://www.jmbullion.com/investing-guide/james/gold-supply/

Edit: derpity-derp-derp fix

[z2]

Wait. Do you mean a cube of silver|gold that's 55|20 meters on one side, as in the width of the cube and not its volume? As in 55^3 = 166,375 m^3 of silver, and 20^3 = 8000 m^3 of gold? That 5.36m diameter cube illustration representing a single year's gold production in the source is already 154 cubic meters.

[utexaspunk]

Couldn't they just run a big pipe out into the middle of the desert and pump it there? Maybe they could create giant salt flats and extract rare earth elements from them, even...

[itcmcgrath]

A cube 55 meters on a side, not 55 cubic meters. That's a huge difference: 166K+ cubic meters