'Gold Rush' Star Rick Ness Faces Season-Ending Catastrophe After Heavy Rains

Discovery Channel

The final push for the season could be quite problematic for one star on "Gold Rush" after being dealt a brutal blow by mother nature. In a sneak peek of the next episode of "Gold Rush," miner Rick Ness is informed that a catastrophic situation has occurred on his mining site.

After a night of heavy rains, the settling pond attached to Big Red, the monster wash plant, has burst its banks and is in danger of illegally flooding the nearby waterways.

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The wash plant uses a man-made pond to discharge it's dirty water, which is then drained into three lower ponds that allow the silt and other materials to slowly settle back into the ground before eventually draining clean water back into the nearby streams and waterways.

The heavy rain caused the discharge pond to burst and feed directly into the lower ponds, overflowing them with dirty water. Contamination of the natural waterway is illegal and could end up costing Ness huge in fines and loss of licenses.

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"Had to be the rain last night," Ness says while staring in awe at the disaster. He adds, " I don't want to send a bunch of dirty water into the streams, it's just ugly and not safe for fish."

"Talk about catastrophic," Rick admits. It's unclear what he plans to do, as shutting down his plant would cause possible season-ending issues. It's another hit for Rick and his crew as they've only been able to dig up 162 oz of gold this season, which puts them far behind the other crews of Parker Schnabel and Tony Beets.

Gettyimages | Roy Rochlin

The current season of "Gold Rush" has brought on tough times for all the crews, and they even faced hurdles before the season kicked off. Parker and Tony had trouble securing water licenses with Alaska so that they could mine, and Parker was only given a 1-year contract before he'd have to shut down.

Rick has been struggling all season as he left the Klondike and went farther up north to find his own plot of land to mine. Unfortunately, he still hasn't hit it big and his gamble is starting to look like it could cause him to go bust.