Hundreds of residents in Manatee County, Florida, were ordered to evacuate their homes over Easter weekend as officials feared that a wastewater pond could collapse “at any time.” On Saturday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the area.The Governor stated:
“Due to a possible breach of mixed saltwater from the south reservoir at the Piney Point facility, I have declared a State of Emergency for Manatee County to ensure resources are allocated for necessary response & recovery.,” reads a tweet from the governor.
County officials said the pond, located at the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant, had a “significant leak,” according to CBS affiliate WTSP-TV. The Manatee County Public Safety Department told people near the plant to evacuate due to an “imminent uncontrolled release of wastewater.”
“A portion of the containment wall at the leak site shifted laterally,” said Manatee Director of Public Safety Jake Saur, “signifying that structural collapse could occur at any time.”
Manatee County Public Safety Department initially sent out emergency evacuation notices on Friday for those who were within half a mile of Piney Point, and by 11 a.m. Saturday, evacuation orders were extended to people within one mile north of the reservoir’s stacks of phosphogypsum — a fertilizer waste product — and those within half a mile to the south of the site. Surrounding stretches of highway were also closed to traffic.
Mandatory evacuations were extended an additional half mile west and one mile southwest of the site on Saturday evening. Manatee County Public Safety Department said that 316 households are within the full evacuation area.
At a press conference Sunday morning, DeSantis said officials are pumping out 33 million gallons of water a day from the pond, and that the water “is not radioactive,” although another official added that the water is “not water we want to see leaving the site.” The primary concern, DeSantis said, is the nutrient makeup of the water, which contains metals. Reports on water samples should be available in the coming days.
MORE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-state-of-emergency-wastewater-leak/
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Floridians were evacuated from their homes on Easter weekend. 480 million gallons of toxic wastewater could end up in Tampa Bay — this might become an environmental catastrophe.
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As the crisis develops in Florida, a brief stroll through history may be important to understand how the state got to a point where Florida state and local leaders fear an “imminent” collapse of the retention pond at the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant in Manatee County…The Manatee County Commission voted unanimously last Thursday to declare a state of emergency due to the liner tear at the gypsum stack at the former phosphate plant on Piney Point.
The emergency order was in response to concerns that a leak in one of the stacks could cause a collapse that would affect nearby communities.
Crews discovered a leak in March and have been actively monitoring water capacity at the former phosphate mining site. HRK Holdings, LLC, is responsible for the operation of the closed phosphogypsum stacks, and they self-reported after finding a tear in one of the compartments.
Phosphogypsum is the primary waste byproduct of the wet-acid process for producing phosphoric acid. Phosphate rock may contain significant quantities of naturally occurring radioactive materials like uranium, thorium and radium and, ultimately, their decay byproducts. Phosphate is typically used to create fertilizer but can also be turned into phosphoric acid, which is also used in some types of animal feed and some types of cosmetics. About 90 percent of domestic production happens in the southern U.S. with Florida accounting for 80% of that
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THE HISTORY
An industrial plant was opened on the site in 1966 by Borden Chemical to process phosphate, a key ingredient in fertilizer.
The plant was later owned by Mulberry Corporation and ceased operations in 2001, at which point the property passed to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection through a court-appointed receivership. The site was purchased from the government by HRK Holdings, LLC in 2006 for $4.3 million and the requirement that they maintain the phosphogypsum stacks and contaminated wastewater left from the plant’s former operations..
HRK Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012 citing expenses from a leak the previous year when HRK had allowed the Manatee County Port Authority to store materials in the property’s reservoirs from the dredging of Port Manatee’s Berth 12 expansion. Portions of the property were sold to Port Manatee, Thatcher Chemical of Florida, Manatee Bulk Storage, and an affiliate of Mayo Fertilizer and Farm Supply as part of HRK’s bankruptcy restructuring.
The remaining property is leased by HRK as an industrial park under the name Eastport, with access to Port Manatee, multiple highways, and a rail yard connected directly to the CSX mainline.
BIGGEST ECOLOGICAL THREAT
In 1992, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE reported that lawyers for Piney Point wanted to keep building code inspectors OUT of the plant! The state wanted to inspect since Piney Point released a toxic sulfur cloud that year!
In 1996, the TAMPA TRIBUNE reported that plans for the plant were on hold, and that state environmental officials were investigating if “MOTHER NATURE — not a phosphogypsum stack — is casing high radiation levels in groundwater under the dormant Piney Point Plant.”
In 2003, the plant made news when the state was trying to clean up the site by spraying millions of gallons of waste water into the Gulf of Mexico to try to avert “one of the biggest environmental threats in Florida history.”
According to the AP in reports then, the state knew in 1995 that the Mulberry Corp was struggling and if it went under, the state would be stuck with hundreds of millions of gallons of acid waste in gypsum stacks on the edge of Tampa Bay.
But despite the knowledge, the state didn’t act on the warnings. In 2003, the state began to fear that the wastewater would spill into Tampa Bay, so it spent $140 million to spray the waste in to the Gulf..
Years upon years of controversy and anger was taking place in the county.. the fear over this site garnered a few headlines throughout the time..In 2014 a front page headline wondered if drinking water contamination was possible..
Just this year, on January 21, 2021, The Bradenton Herald ran a story that 800 million gallons of waste is one “one bad storm event” away from disaster…The article predicted that if a catastrophe happened, it would be Manatee County’s problem…
