The Clock is Ticking on Florida's Mountains of Hazardous Phosphate Waste [View all]

[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.