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Work continues to locate, fix Piney Point leaks

Work continues to locate, fix Piney Point leaks

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Community News.

PALMETTO – Workers continue to search for leaks identified last month in a gypsum stack storing contaminated water at the former phosphate plant at Piney Point.

Contractors deployed a device last week designed to remove mud and silt, clearing the water so workers can find and repair the leaks more easily, according to a Florida Department of Environmental Protection report.

Piney Point’s court-appointed receiver also has authorized the use of a new system to maximize water evaporation from the wastewater storage pond in the leaking stack to lower water levels.

FDEP reported on Jan. 5 that three leaks in the stack were seeping less than three gallons of water per minute combined. Scuba divers and other workers identified the source of one leak using hydrophone surveys, sonar work and dye trace studies.

Leaking water is being pumped back into the storage pond on top of the gyp stack, according to the agency’s most recent report, which states, “There continues to be no indication of any concern with the integrity or stability of the stack system, and there are no offsite discharges occurring at this time.”

A leak in March 2021 resulted in FDEP approving the dumping of 215 million gallons of contaminated water into Tampa Bay to prevent flooding of homes and businesses in the event of the stack’s collapse. The contaminated water discharged in March and April spread throughout Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay, transporting nitrogen and phosphorus that worsened a bloom of the toxic algae red tide that lasted from April to November, causing fish kills and respiratory irritation. Since then, about 265 tons of nitrogen and 240 tons of phosphate have been removed from the wastewater ponds as a precaution.

The contaminated water at Piney Point eventually will be injected into a 3,300-foot-deep well now under construction at 3105 Buckeye Road. The FDEP issued a permit in December for Manatee County to build the well despite objections from five environmental groups concerned about the potential for contaminating underground drinking water in the Floridan aquifer.

Coast Lines: First, do no harm

Coast Lines: First, do no harm

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Coast Lines, Outdoors.

A recent visit to the Mulberry Phosphate Museum was fascinating, with its finds of prehistoric giant ground sloths, mammoths, sharks, manatees and crocodiles, and even a 3000-year-old dugout canoe, all unearthed by equipment used in phosphate mining.Coast Lines logo - border

Wall murals show how mining companies in Florida restore the land after the mines are exhausted, even to the point of hosting threatened Florida scrub jays and gopher tortoises.

Missing from the diorama is what happens when it all goes wrong.

Lining gypsum stacks with material that wasn’t supposed to deteriorate and filling them with wastewater from the Piney Point phosphate mine never sounded like the best idea, but it likely was the most cost-effective idea.

Now that there’s a breach, and the ongoing discharge of hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater into local waters to avert a worse breach, we’re faced with the prospect of an environmental disaster unseen since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill began in April 2010.

Why can’t the wastewater be pumped into containers at Port Manatee instead of into our precious, beautiful and interconnected waterways, where nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater is undoubtedly going to feed red tide, and where other toxins may kill fish even before the red tide gets them?

Containers could be stored indefinitely, or transported to a treatment plant, which, by the way, could have been mandated on site when the mine was permitted.

Surely there is emergency money for such a solution in the state’s budget, if not the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s budget.

If state leaders are not able to come up with a better solution to this crisis than dumping phosphate mining wastewater into the pristine waters that attract our visitors, why continue to spend money on advertising for tourists?

Especially this time of year – when it’s spring, and we’re just peeking out from the pandemic – it’s heartbreaking to realize that in the coming weeks, we may see vacations ruined by red tide, fish kills and respiratory symptoms, and maybe things even worse than red tide. We may see vacation rental cancellations and businesses floundering, just when they’re about to regain normalcy from the pandemic.

Thanks to a lack of responsibility, wisdom, foresight and possibly even concern among government officials, visitors and residents will likely be avoiding the beaches this summer – the one place where we almost felt comfortable during the year of the coronavirus.

To the families evacuated from their homes just before Easter Sunday, to the people who have spent decades volunteering to plant seagrasses and count scallops and create oyster beds in area waters, to those who make their livings on the water, to the marine life, and to all the people of Tampa Bay, mine owners and state officials owe more than mitigation and an apology.

They must choose a solution to this crisis that does no further harm.

Reel Time: The price of inaction

Written by Rusty Chinnis on . Posted in Outdoors, Reel Time.

On Monday, March 26, the latest and hopefully final chapter unfolded in a sordid novel with no redeeming chapters and a far less-than-happy ending. The saga began in the 1960s when the Borden Corporation (yes, the cow) was given a permit by Manatee County to build a processing facility at Piney Point to turn phosphate into fertilizer. In the early 70s, the company went into bankruptcy and literally walked away from the property, leaving the tailings from the processing in giant, toxic mounds on the edges of Tampa Bay. The history of the site is one of mistakes and missteps that would, and probably will, one day fill a novel on the price of inaction.

The leaking gyp stack and pond at Piney Point. – Rusty Chinnis | Sun

Suncoast Waterkeeper and Tampa Bay Waterkeeper are organizations that I’ve highlighted in this column over the past few years. Both are playing a central role in trying to understand the underlying issues so that they can disseminate current and reliable information to the public.

As of Sunday, April 4, we were being told that the collapse of the compromised gypsum stack was no longer imminent, although the area had been evacuated. Meanwhile, untreated, polluted water from the site is being pumped into Tampa Bay at the rate of 22,000 gallons a minute. Water from the breach in the stack, along with water from additional pumps that are being flown in, is being drained from the stack. That water will most likely be carried into Bishop Harbor to the west and Cockroach Bay to the east. Both are designated as Outstanding Florida Waters.

It’s hard to imagine anything positive emerging from this ecological nightmare other than, hopefully, a wake-up call to the public that this is what happens when politicians and public officials don’t follow their mandate to work for the public good. That realization seems to be on the lips of most everyone I talk to, but in truth, this is a shared responsibility. We the citizens are also responsible to hold our elected officials accountable to do the work we elected them to do. This is an example of what can happen when citizens don’t pay attention and let others make decisions on their behalf.

This will be an unfolding story of the incalculable damage that results from greed, inaction, lack of accountability and irresponsible actions by parties on all levels from the county to the highest offices in Florida and beyond. Even now we’re hearing statements claiming the water “meets industry standards, outside of ammonia, nitrate and phosphorus levels,” which is to say, of course, that it doesn’t meet industry standards. Spin isn’t going to play this time. Dave Tomasko, executive director of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, told me on April 4 that he’s working with Ed Sherwood, director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, to calculate loads from the release and they are, in fact, “much worse than I was led to believe.”  Both Tampa Bay Waterkeeper and Suncoast Waterkeeper are working to update the public with the latest updates on Facebook. Stay tuned, get involved and hold your elected officials responsible for protecting the public good. In the end, it’s the public and our natural resources that pay the price of inaction.