The Solution to Pollution is Dillution

Rocky Flats (Wikipedia)

Rocky Flats was a nuclear weapons production site (hydrogen bomb and plutonium) until 1992.  As with most of the national lab associated with the weapons program  they had leakage of radioactive material into the environment.  (Is there a weapon's lab that didn't have a release?)  One such release exceeded the EPA's limits for soil contamination by a little bit, so the Rocky Flat's solution was just to till the group; dilute the contamination to below the EPA limits.  This didn't fly, and eventually Rocky Flats had to clean up their mess.

This brings up an interesting point; why was it a problem to dilute the pollution to below the EPA limit?  Almost all of the NRC operating limits are not determined by the amount of radioactivity you release, but rather how much you release per volume / mass or the dose, which depends on the per volume / mass you are in contact with (for the exact values, see 10 CFR - there is some good stuff in there).   Their probably shouldn't be so much leeway in the codes - a hard amount of radioactivity released (in activity, broken down by isotope) should be set.

How many messes do you clean up by diluting?