The Clock is Ticking on Florida's Mountains of Hazardous Phosphate Waste

[Sancho]

Read the whole article...it's worth the time.

https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/articles/2017/4/26/florida-phosphate#.W36Py9G1J-E.facebook

One of the largest fertilizer manufacturing plants in the world sits about six miles southwest of the Polk County hamlet of Mulberry, with its entrance in walking distance of the Hillsborough County line. About 800 employees work there, turning phosphate rock into nearly 4 million tons of fertilizer and animal food ingredients every year.

They also produce a lot of waste. That’s not unusual for the phosphate industry.

Mosaic’s phosphate mines and fertilizer factories must store their waste this way because there is no other way to get rid of it safely. The phosphogypsum is mildly radioactive, enough so that it exceeds a level that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has deemed safe for humans. The industry has proposed using its waste for everything from wallboard to road-building material. But the EPA, since 1992, has repeatedly said no. So the only solution is to stack it.

Florida’s leading industry is tourism. Nearly 100 million tourists visit the state every year. They show up because Florida’s air and beaches are clean and free of pollution. One catastrophic gyp stack leak like the one that happened in 1997 can lay waste to an entire estuary, creating fishkills and other impacts that can drive the tourists away for years. To Mader, the two industries—tourism and phosphate—are like trains running straight toward each other on the same track.

[csziggy]

1. My grandfather and my father were phosphate mining engineers

But they never foresaw that the processes they helped developed (my grandfather's name is on the patent for the refining process) would lead to this. I left Polk County partly because the places I went horseback riding in as a child no longer existed - the swampy trail lined with cypress trees I rode down was mined then "reclaimed" into square lakes that now have housing developments around them.

In the 1960s my father was hired by the Atomic Energy Commission to evaluate if the radioactive materials in the phosphate waste materials could be economically extracted. At the time he had improved on his father's process enough that Sand Mountain, a huge waste pile south of Fort Meade, was reprocessed to take more phosphate out of the waste. The AEC was hoping that at the same time they could get the radioactives out. It must not have been economically possible since it never happened. For many years my father would not let us talk about the AEC men that came to discuss it with him.

In the 1980s or 90s, there was a bit of a stir - many of the concrete block houses in Polk County had been built with blocks made from sand that was waste from the phosphate mines. In testing for radon gas it was found that the concrete blocks were increasing the background radiation in those houses. Eventually the upset went away since the level of radiation was not that high. Dad always said it was not worth worrying about.

I'm sorry to know the role my family had in this mess.