the waters of Tampa Bay Florida are

[onethatcares]

being poisoned as you read this thanks to gypsum mining.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/breaking-news/2021/04/02/fearing-disaster-manatee-county-orders-evacuation-for-residents-near-old-phosphate-plant/

[flying_wahini]

1. It just hurts my heart to see articles like this.

Greed will bring us all down.

[onethatcares]

2. a 79 acre retention pond

with over 750 million gallons of water that needs to be emptied into a bay that was just getting cleaned up.

Meanwhile we get commercials on the teevee telling us how nice Mosaic is about restoring wetlands.

[quaker bill]

5. Mosaic restores wetlands

because regulation requires them to do so. All companies make compliance with these regulations a selling point. Developers call a development "cypress reserve" because someone did not let them bulldoze the cypress to build more homes...

Neutral process water in this particular pond is apparently mixed with salt water already. It is not that good to release it, but not a huge catastrophe if done slowly. The catastrophe would be a collapse of the levee that releases it all at once. To prevent that, they do need to get the pressure off and make repairs.

Now, no doubt it would be better to not have it there at all, but that ship sailed long ago.

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. As if this isn't bad enough, the entirety of the Everglades is dying.

[Crazyleftie]

4. a new phosphate mine was recently approved for

Deesoto county....bad news for the peace river....
unfortunately thing will only get worse throughout Florida

[Submariner]

6. Eaters of the earth: How the fertilizer industry leaves a trail of destruction across

the American South.

A phosphogypsum stack located near Fort Meade, Florida


Phosphate rock allowed farmers to stop using manure fertilizer, kicking us into the modern era of agriculture. But those who live near the mining industry’s epicenter fear its huge towers of radioactive sludge will pour into their backyards.

https://thecounter.org/earth-day-mosaic-phosphate-fertilizer-louisiana-mississippi/

[mopinko]

7. you know what pisses me off about this?

you can make gypsum from power plant gasses.
it's damn simple chemistry. coal ash, too i believe, which is my BIGGEST environmental pet peeve.

the whole of color printing and photography rests on the work of german scientists to use the residue for "town gas". this was the gas pumped out of the coal mines and it sooted up the gaslights.
basically coal ash. there is absolutely no reason to be digging up/grinding up big rocks to get this stuff. huge amounts of valuable minerals just laying around poisoning people.

[onethatcares]

8. huh.....

I must be missing something in your post.