In 1988, the company found out its billion-ton tailings pond would breach in a strong quake, burying nearby homes in a deluge of mud. Instead of warning people, the copper giant decided secrecy was the best policy.

MAGNA - The Bells long suspected they might be living in harm's way.  Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. often dispatched Darrell Bell, a company laborer, to shore up the massive embankment near their neighborhood that held back a billion tons of soupy mine waste. The impoundment, he told his wife, was too weak.  "If it came loose," Marilyn Bell recalls now, "nothing could be done to stop it."  The Bells had no way of knowing, but Kennecott executives secretly had the same fear.  And for good reason.  Chances were too high that the massive embankment would breach in a big earthquake, engineers told them in 1988.  And nearby homes, including the Bells', might be buried under an avalanche of mine sludge.  Kennecott's management team huddled every Friday afternoon for more than a year to deal with the problem. Then-President Frank Joklik ordered a cover-up to avert "panic and suits."  Joklik's strategy included: 

* Buying homes covertly in the Bells' neighborhood, a subdivision east of downtown Magna called Green Meadows Estates; 

* Tallying the company's legal liability by assigning a dollar figure to the lives of men, women and children who might die if the impoundment failed; 

* Launching a 30-year, half-billion-dollar modernization to stabilize the Magna tailings pond, and 

* Colluding with state regulators to keep the frightening engineering reports out of the public eye.  Joklik, now 79, doesn't remember things that way. "I can't reconstruct what happened 20 years ago," he said recently, directing further questions to Kennecott. "The record would speak for itself."  And current Kennecott President Andrew Harding, who has been on the job for four months, did not try to explain Kennecott's past actions.  "All I can do," he said, "is apologize for the history."  Backed by current employees and consultants, Harding says he is sure the tailings pond is now safe and will soon be completely stable. Final improvements are expected to be finished 10 years from now. It will be three decades after the world's second-largest mining company and one of Utah's most prominent corporate citizens first decided to hide the danger from the people who most needed to know.  

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