DeSantis declares state of emergency after a significant leak at a storage pond of wastewater...

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
ABC News
@ABC
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency after a significant leak at a storage pond of wastewater threatened to cause flooding and collapse a system with radioactive material. https://abcn.ws/2Pw2I48

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/leak-wastewater-pond-prompts-evacuations-florida-76854872

BRADENTON, Fla. -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency Saturday after a significant leak at a storage pond of wastewater threatened to cause flooding and collapse a system with radioactive material.

Officials in Florida were evacuating homes and a highway Saturday near the large reservoir in the area north of Bradenton, Florida, on Friday. News outlets say the Red Cross has been called in to help residents.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection says a break was detected Friday in one of the walls of a 77-acre (33-hectare) pond, holding millions of water containing phosphorus and nitrogen from an old phosphate plant.

The Tampa Bay Times says the reservoir in question held about 480 million gallons (about 1.8 billion liters) of wastewater before the company that operates it began discharging some of it to Port Manatee this week. At least 25 million gallons of the water had been discharged by early Thursday.

The pond where the leak was discovered is at the old Piney Point phosphate plant, where there are stacks of phosphogypsum, a waste product from manufacturing fertilizer that is radioactive. It contains small amounts of naturally occurring radium and uranium, and the stacks can also release large concentrations of radon gas.

*snip*

[SharonClark]

1. Florida has just one damn crisis after another.

[TheBlackAdder]

9. It seems like it is just as radioactive as the 1.1 Million fracking wells, with 8K or more in Fla.

.

"small amounts of naturally occurring radium and uranium, and the stacks can also release large concentrations of radon gas."

.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. Okay, so the water is not radioactive ...

This reporting seems irresponsible frankly.

Obviously the potentially leaking wastewater is hazardous, but 'radioactive waste' would be a whole other level. This is a good way to cause a major panic unnecessarily.

[Nevilledog]

3. More my fault.....

[vercetti2021]

4. Great

More Floriduh man will be created.

[Nevilledog]

5. But now they'll have six hands and two weenies

[Budi]

12. Like they're not already enough trouble!

[Raftergirl]

6. I'm surprised he's not encouraging Floridians

to take a dip in it.

[TheBlackAdder]

7. Didn't they learn the lessons of Louisiana, when Katrina wiped out all of their open toxic lakes?

.

Why the fuck are states in hurricane areas keeping open lakes of toxic materials?

.

[Budi]

14. Same reason Texas never fixed their electrical grid,. It's a Red State thing

Corrupt af from the top down.
Money, favors & greasy palms.
They don't give 2 shits about anything outside of their elitist enclaves.
Like they really didn't care if 500,000 ppl died from a virus.

DeSantis, like the rest will now expect Fed tax dollars to be gifted "for the disaster", which he in turn will re-gift to a contractor, who in turn re-gifts back to him as a campaign donation.

Guess ppl are only good for one reason in those disaster ridden States.

[onethatcares]

16. because

the phosphate industry owns the floriduh legislature. the phosphate is mined and turned into fertilzer and in the end we ingest it.

It's not really toxic though, even if the juvenile fish and aquatic species die from the dilution. On the bright side more houses can be built on the waterfront and we won't have to deal with those pesky manatees getting hit by our boats...

I hope I don't have to go all. on this.

Second bright side is, our senators have chimed in saying their tots and pears are with us and the fishes.

If anyone saw the press conference last night 4/2/21 with the guy in charge, he led off with, "This is my second day on the job"

FFS, they found the perfect guy to take the hit. Second day on the job and "here, fix this mess we made beginning 12 years ago"

btw, he said the outflow would only reduce the ph level to 5.4 in the affected area of the bay. Thank gaud for chemistry.

[Dream Girl]

8. Sounds about right.

[malaise]

10. A perfect metaphor

for Deathsentence

[PortTack]

11. This guys want to be president!! Scary

[dalton99a]

13. NEXT: DeSantis requests disaster declaration, federal funds

[Budi]

15. Like a recurring gift from the taxpayers to the Red State's pocket

They run this sort of disaster & collect thing like a business model.

[NotASurfer]

18. So we will find out what happens when toxic waste meets alligators

And invasive pythons. Didn't the SyFy channel already cover this?

[Blue_true]

34. It will be Gazgator fight King Snake, after they eat all the people and

only have each other left.

[ShazamIam]

19. I think there may be a cover-up involved. /s that is really all from Flordia's State House,

toxic waste seems to be the major product of their government.

[monkeyman1]

20. don't give Deathsentence shit ! he is toxic also ! another drumpf'y con man.

[spanone]

21. 'wastewater' is a euphemism for what?

[TomDaisy]

22. Jesus.

[PatrickforB]

23. They were SO careful not to name the company. You all know why?

So they can pass the costs of cleanup onto we taxpayers. That's why.

Primacy of the shareholder - these corporations will bust unions, drive down the quality and safety of the product, and contaminate the environment because the ONLY responsibility a CEO of a publicly held corporation is to make money for shareholders. That's it.

That is a big part of the problem, along with us allowing corporations to use their dollars as free speech. Citizens United and the other rulings like have been a disaster.

Now, with McConnell's packing of the federal courts with right wing judges who will legislate from the bench, and the removal of the Fairness Doctrine allowing massive right-wing propaganda to contaminate our public dialog, things seem kind of bleak.

Biden is doing great though - gotta give him that. But he cannot do it alone. We all need to keep fighting these voter suppression laws, and having our Senators and Representatives on speed dial - we should all be calling them weekly on various issues.

[csziggy]

31. The company abandoned the plant in 2001

The Story So Far
A troubled history

1966 Borden Chemical Company constructs Piney Point phosphate plant; four owners since then.
1989 23,000-gallon leak of sulfuric acid from a holding tank, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people, including Port Manatee workers.
1991 Two air releases of sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide.
1993 Mulberry Corporation purchases Piney Point facility from Royster Phosphates, Inc. after Royster declares bankruptcy.
1997 Dam failure at Polk County plant sends 54 million gallons of acid water into Alafia River, killing more than a million fish.
Dec. 28, 1999 Citing a depressed fertilizer market, Mulberry Corp. notifies Florida Department of Environmental Protection of proposed facility shutdowns, with intent to re-open in six months.
2000 DEP increases frequency of inspections and hires consulting firm to verify water storage calculations.
Jan. 30, 2001 Mulberry Corp. contacts DEP to say that financial difficulties will prevent it from assuring environmental security at its Polk County and Piney Point plants; abandons plants 48 hours later.
Feb. 7, 2001 EPA jumps in on emergency basis to run operations for two weeks.
Feb. 8, 2001 Mulberry Corporation files for bankruptcy.
Feb. 21, 2001 DEP takes over with initial $4 million in state emergency funds, most of which is needed to pay the electric bill to keep water pumps and water treatment devices working.
Nov. 2001 DEP authorizes emergency discharges into Bishop Harbor following Tropical Storm Gabrielle; 10 million gallons of partially treated wastewater released to prevent total collapse of dikes.
Jan. 2002 Agency on Bay Management forms task force to develop alternatives to discharging partially treated wastewater from site.
Spring 2002 DEP hires FSU finance professor to develop recommendations for strengthening corporate financial assurances.
May 2002 Cargill Fertilizer announces plans to take over Mulberry Corp.'s defunct Polk County plant.

http://baysoundings.com/legacy-archives/sum02/pineypt.html

That's as far as that article goes, but Cargill, now Mosaic, has a terrible history of environmental failures. Of course, that is not included in the Wikipedia article of the company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosaic_Company

[Lonestarblue]

24. This makes Biden"s case for the infrastructure bill.

It has money to help fix old infrastructure that Republicans don’t care about because it’s always someone else’s job and their rich donors don’t care because it’s not in their back yard.

[SheltieLover]

25. Like a Carl Hiaasen novel, but not saire, sadly.

[mjvpi]

28. I was just going there.

Every time that I visited my parents and mother in law, the news in the Florida newspapers would kill me. Tampa Bay Times has been a great paper for a long time. Then I read my first Hiaasen book. In Florida, truth is stranger and more tragic than fiction. In Florida.

[SheltieLover]

32. Hiaasen just retired.

Hoping he will.have more time to write novels!

Have you read his latest, "Squeeze Me?" Superb!!!

[mjvpi]

35. Great suggestion. Thanks

[SheltieLover]

36. Yw!

It is perhaps his besf novel. Set during current times, well before turd was dethroned.

[GulfCoast66]

37. It's a hilarious read. Hoping now that retired he will write more.

I could not believe he brought back Skink!

[Kingofalldems]

26. Does deregulation figure into this?

[bucolic_frolic]

27. I thought Republicans considered wastewater a health tonic

[Larissa]

29. "It contains small amounts of naturally occurring radium and uranium . . . "

If it's "natural" is must not be so bad. Right? Uranium has been used to blow up things. But, hey, it's "naturally occurring." Right? Marie Curie's remains are still radioactive after her exposure to radium more than 100 years after she passed -- from exposure to radium.

The Half Life of Marie Curie
https://kenyonlyceum.wordpress.com/2019/12/14/the-half-life-of-marie-curie/#:~:text=Even%20Marie's%20belongings%E2%80%94papers%2C%20furniture,waiver%20and%20wear%20protective%20clothing.

[csziggy]

33. In the 1960's my father was hired by the Atomic Energy Commission

To see if it was feasible to extract the radioactives from phosphate mining leftovers. Dad had just re-worked the method of extracting more phosphate from the previous processes leftover sand (that previous process was developed by my grandfather). It was not feasible, so they just left the radioactives in the waste sand which was used to make concrete products (including blocks to build houses) and as part of materials to build roads, etc.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a big scandal about the rise in radioactivity in structures made those materials and scare mongering about how many people in Florida lived in those houses. Once measured it was found that the levels were only slightly raised to about what the background radiation in Denver is. Of course, since most of Florida is at nearly sea level, that is a noticeable rise but not enough to panic over.

[GulfCoast66]

38. Right. The real danger here is all that nutrient rich water waiting to kill the bay.

As you know that part of our coast is already a wreck. Seems like red tides are becoming the norm and there are so few fish the FWC has closed fishing for most inshore species. I no longer pull the boat down that way instead going to the Nature or Forgotten coasts.

But radiation? If you enjoy outside activities in Florida, as the wife and I do, we are way more at risk from solar radiation than any other. As my dermatologist will attest! I leave parts of me behind every time I visit. Wish we had known the risks when I was a kid running around in cut offs and nothing else. Even shoes. Spent every summer continually peeling.

[csziggy]

39. This is the stuff left after they have taken out over 95% or more of the phosphate

Most of the contamination is gypsum according to the coverage I've read - more precisely phosphogypsum:

Phosphogypsum refers to the calcium sulfate hydrate formed as a by-product of the production of fertilizer from phosphate rock. It is mainly composed of gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O). Although gypsum is a widely used material in the construction industry, phosphogypsum is usually not used, but is stored indefinitely because of its weak radioactivity. The long-range storage is controversial.[1] Somewhere between 100,000,000 and 280,000,000 tons are estimated to be produced annually as a consequence of the processing of phosphate rock for the production of phosphate fertilizers.

{SNIP}

Central Florida has a large quantity of phosphate deposits, particularly in the Bone Valley region. The marine-deposited phosphate ore from central Florida is weakly radioactive, and as such, the phosphogypsum by-product (in which the radionuclides are somewhat concentrated) is too radioactive to be used for most applications. As a result, there are about 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum stacked in 25 stacks in Florida (22 are in central Florida) and about 30 million new tons are generated each year.

Phosphogypsum stack located near Fort Meade, Florida. These contain the waste byproducts of the phosphate fertilizer industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphogypsum

While I am not a chemist or a mining engineer I grew up with the process. My grandfather's name is on the patent for the process by which phosphate was refined from the matrix. In the 1960s my father improved on the process. A plant my grandfather managed produced a 200 foot tall pile of sand that was a local tourist attraction called Sand Mountain. His process removed 80-90% of the phosphate. My father's improvement made it economically practical to removed about 95% of what was left and Sand Mountain is no more.

That was when my Dad was hired by the Atomic Energy Commission to see if it would be practical to recover the radioactives in the waste sand - they would have done that at the same time as the phosphate was removed.

The history of Sand Mountain can be found in this article: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~crackerbarrel/Sand%20Mt.html

[GulfCoast66]

40. You come from a really smart line, that's for sure!

What is your opinion of using the sand for road beds? To me the radiation risk is negligible and I would love to see all the sand mine around my home(Lake County) shut down in exchange for using sand we are already digging out.

One thing for sure, to feed 7 Billion people we need phosphate. Although I sure some of our organic gardening fans here on DU will strongly disagree.

Have a nice Easter.