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Rainfall threatens to overfill Piney Point ponds

Piney Point deep water injection well draft permit issued

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Environment, Featured, Outdoors.

PALMETTO – The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) has issued a draft permit for Manatee County to build and test an underground injection well to store contaminated water from Piney Point under the Floridan aquifer, the state’s drinking water source.

The April 20 permit request by the Manatee County Utilities Department is for two wells at 3105 Buckeye Road – an injection well and a monitor well. Under the permit, issued Sept. 1, the injection well would be up to 3,300 feet deep and could be filled at the rate of up to 4 million gallons a day. The monitor well to test drinking water would be up to 950 feet deep.

A public meeting on the permit will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 6 from 4-7 p.m. at the Manatee County Central Library auditorium, 1301 Barcarrota Blvd. in Bradenton to give citizens an opportunity to comment on the draft permit, ask questions and obtain information.

Written comments also can be submitted to FDEP Aquifer Protection Program, 2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 3530, Tallahassee, Florida 33637-0926 by Oct 6.

Manatee County commissioners approved a $9.35 million agreement on April 20 – the same day as the permit request – for Tampa-based ASRus to design and build the deep injection well.

The permit, which makes the county liable for harm to human health or animal or plant life, also prohibits anything that “causes or allows movement of fluid into an underground source of drinking water,” which the permit states is located at about 900 feet deep at the site.

Should the injection well fail, the permit requires that current methods of water management resume, including trucking and piping the water off site. The removal of the contaminated water began after FDEP approved the emergency discharge of 215 million untreated gallons into Tampa Bay in March and April to avoid the potential collapse of the compromised south gypsum stack. The pond at the top of the stack then contained more than twice that amount of polluted water, which the state agency feared could flood the surrounding neighborhood.

Deep well injection “is one potential critical element of the necessary water disposal that will enable the ultimate closure of the Piney Point facility once and for all, eliminating the threat from this site to the environment and the community permanently,” according to an FDEP release.

Opposition to the well

Local environmental group ManaSota-88 asked the Manatee County Commission today to withdraw its application for the permit and place the issue on next week’s agenda for public discussion.

The group opposes the deep injection well on several grounds, including that wells are subject to failure, and that leaks of the contaminated water – which is also slightly radioactive – could poison the state’s drinking water.

“The operation of a deep well relies very heavily on predictions and good faith,” Glenn Compton, chairman of ManaSota-88, wrote the commission. “Deep well injection is done because liquid wastes that cannot be discharged into surface waters are injected into deep wells. Thus, the worst wastes end up in these wells. If a failure occurs, very little can be done to correct it. If an aquifer is contaminated, it’s too late.”

Compton also is concerned that changing conditions in the aquifer can allow wastewater to seep into the groundwater supply, and that detecting a leak in the system is “an inexact science.”

“There are no easy answers to getting rid of the radioactive and toxic wastewater at the former Piney Point Phosphate Plant, however, deep well injection is not a solution that should be considered,” he wrote.

ManaSota-88 is among five environmental groups that sued FDEP and Piney Point owner HRK Holdings LLC on June 24 seeking to hold both responsible for negligence in managing the site. No hearing has yet been set in the case.

A public meeting on the permit will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 6 from 4-7 p.m. at the Manatee County Central Library auditorium, 1301 Barcarrota Blvd. in Bradenton to give citizens an opportunity to comment on the draft permit, ask questions and obtain information.

Written comments also can be submitted to FDEP Aquifer Protection Program, 2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 3530, Tallahassee, Florida 33637-0926 by Oct 6.

Pond status

Water management at the site is ongoing. FDEP officials estimate that Piney Point will get at least another 7 inches of rain by the end of September. The current storage capacity for additional rainfall at the site is about 10.5 inches as of today. Totals are changing with rainfall amounts and water management activities at the site, including trucking water off site to the Manatee County Southeast Water Reclamation Facility to lower water levels; 228 trucks have hauled about 1,440,480 gallons of process water off site as of today. Contaminated water began to be piped to the North Regional Water Reclamation Facility on Sept. 2. About 263 million gallons remain in the pond, up from 256 million gallons on Aug. 28, the increase due to rainfall.

The state agency also is working with a contractor to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from the water in case another discharge becomes necessary. Since the April discharge, the water has been treated to remove about 200 tons of nitrogen and 150 tons of phosphorus. Both act as fertilizer for toxic red tide, which has plagued area waters since mid-April.

This week is the first that no red tide was detected in Manatee County waters since the discharge, although it remains in waterways in Pinellas County to the north and Sarasota County to the south.

FDEP Secretary Shawn Hamilton visited the Piney Point site on Sept. 1 to receive an update on the latest site conditions and meet with the new court-appointed receiver, Herbert Donica, a business lawyer and partner of the Tampa-based Donica Law Firm. Under the Aug. 25 court order appointing him, Donica is responsible for maintaining, managing and closing Piney Point “as efficiently and expeditiously as possible.”

FDEP sued Piney Point owner HRK Holdings LLC last month requesting an emergency hearing to appoint the receiver, concerned that heavy rains could overflow contaminated water ponds this summer.

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County moving forward with Piney Point deep injection well

County approves Piney Point deep injection well contractor

Written by Joe Hendricks on . Posted in Community News, Featured, Manatee County.

MANATEE COUNTY – County commissioners have approved a construction agreement for a deep injection well as part of the efforts to permanently close the Piney Point property.

Located in Palmetto, near Port Manatee, the Piney Point property served as a phosphate processing plant from 1966 to 1999. Current owner HRK Holdings bought the vacated property in 2006.

After a leak was detected in one of the plant’s gyp stack retention ponds last month, 215 million gallons of polluted water were released into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee to prevent an accidental spill of even more wastewater.

County commissioners voted 6-1 on Tuesday, April 20 in support of a construction agreement with Youngquist Brothers Inc. for an injection well to hold the remaining contaminated water at a total cost not to exceed $9.35 million. Commissioner Reggie Bellamy opposed the agreement.

On April 6, the county commission authorized acting County Administrator Scott Hopes to secure the services of the Tampa-based ASRus firm to complete the design, permitting and construction-phase services for an underground deep injection well on county-owned property, and to secure a qualified party to construct the new well.

The construction agreement calls for one, 11.75-inch “nominal diameter Class I injection well” with a total depth of up to 3,500 feet. The well will be completed with a final carbon steel outer casing cemented to land surface, with a fiberglass reinforced plastic inner casing to land surface. Both the inner and outer casings will extend to the same approximate depth of 1,950 feet. The agreement also calls for one, six-inch nominal diameter dual zone monitoring well with an anticipated depth of about 950 feet.

According to a summary document included in the meeting packet, “Youngquist Brothers, as recommended by ASRus, is the appropriately qualified party to construct the well. The construction cost is $8.5 million; however, a 10% contingency is incorporated to account for any unforeseen circumstances and shall be used with the approval of the county. The substantial completion time is 330 calendar days from the issuance of the Notice to Proceed Construction, which allows for the time necessary to obtain the FDEP permit.”

The Piney Point wastewater will be treated before it’s discharged into the earth.

“We manage three deep wells right now. We have three and Tropicana has one. I’ve never gotten a complaint or concern about those three deep wells,” Commissioner Carol Whitmore said.

Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge said the deep well at the county’s 66th Street utilities plant in Bradenton can handle 15 million gallons of wastewater per day.

Drinking water concerns

Skye Gundy provided the commissioners with the perspective of a resident who lives near the Piney Point property.

“I’m here to talk about the ongoing disaster at Piney Point. I am one of the closest residents to the actual breach and leak. I am a lifelong community member of Manatee County, born and raised. After I came home from the University of Florida, I came home to serve the community that raised me. I bought my own slice of heaven. I own three acres of paradise – everything we love about Manatee County right there on three acres. This disaster has broken that tranquility and caused me to be angry and disillusioned at the governing bodies that are supposed to protect me, and quite anxious.”

County moving forward with Piney Point deep injection well
Resident Skye Grundy asked the county to test the wells of those who live near Piney Point. – Submitted

Grundy also addressed the future safety of those impacted residents and property owners.

“I have three children and no one has tested my well water – or anybody on my street, or anybody in my community. We pay for private well testing and for the tests that we’ll have to do now it will be in the thousands of dollars; and if you’ve got a water treatment system, it will be thousands of dollars. I’m urging you to consider giving us public water or to help pay for our private water testing,” Grundy said.

District 1 Commissioner James Satcher later made a motion for the county to provide emergency well testing for residents living within a certain distance of the Piney Point property.

“We’re not the ones living there drinking that water. If we were, we’d want to get it tested. They didn’t create this issue,” he said.

Hopes said well testing is the responsibility of the Department of Health and he offered to coordinate those efforts with that state agency before spending county resources.

Van Ostenbridge suggested Satcher’s motion be amended as follows: “The board directs the county administrator to expedite the coordination of well testing near Piney Point.”

The amended motion passed by a 7-0 vote.

Satcher also shared his views on the future of phosphate mining in Manatee County.

“I understand the company that put this stack there is out of business, but if any company is doing anything similar to this, we’re going to have to change the rules and put our foot down. I don’t plan on voting for any more permits. I understand people need to eat and farmers need fertilizer, but not at the cost of our citizens; not at the cost of our bays; not at the cost of our beaches. That doesn’t cut it any longer,” he said.

Regarding the Piney Point property, Van Ostenbridge noted: “It was never a mine. It was a phosphorus processing plant that started back in the 60s. The company went bankrupt and here we are. There are no other processing plants in Manatee County.”

County Attorney Bill Clague provided additional clarification and said, “Our local mining ordinance prohibits the construction of any new gyp (phosphogypsum) stacks or phosphorus plants in Manatee County. It has since 2004. Our local regulations do not allow them to ever build one of these again in Manatee County. This is the only one in Manatee County. The other mountains that you see on mines are clay settling areas, they’re not gyp. Are they environmentally great? No, but they’re not the same level of concern as a gyp stack.”

According to the Manatee County website, “There are currently over 17,000 acres of land approved for phosphate mining in Manatee County. Only one company is actively mining phosphate in Manatee County: Mosaic Fertilizer.”

Before the discussion ended, Satcher made another motion proposing access to county water service be extended to those who live near Piney Point who are not currently serviced by county water. This prompted a discussion on the significant costs that the county and the impacted property owners would incur.

As an alternative, Commission Chair Vanessa Baugh suggested the following future action: “We are asking public utilities to give us a report on that particular area by Piney Point – the residences and business there who are on well and what it might take to change that, if possible.”

Satcher accepted Baugh’s suggestion. The commission also extended its local state of emergency declaration regarding Piney Point.