Democracy Dies in Darkness

Florida officials scramble to prevent ‘catastrophic

flood’ of contaminated water from leaking reservoir
By Paulina Firozi and Brittany Shammas

April 4, 2021 at 6:48 p.m. GMT-3

Florida officials were scrambling Sunday to prevent a “catastrophic flood” after the lining in a reservoir
holding hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater sprang a leak. They warned that the breached
reservoir’s total collapse could send a 20-foot wall of contaminated water crashing down into the
surrounding area.

Manatee County officials on Saturday ordered people in more than 300 homes to urgently evacuate the
area around an old phosphate plant at Piney Point, where officials described a deteriorating leak in one of
the reservoir containment walls.

“If you’re in an evacuation area and you have not heeded that, you need to think twice and follow the
orders,” acting Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes warned.

As state and local authorities warned of potential flooding, scientists expressed concern about longer-term
consequences, including whether the leaking water could drive algae blooms that could be fatal to marine
life.

“What we’re looking at now is trying to prevent — and respond to if need be — a catastrophic flood issue,”
said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who declared a state of emergency on Saturday for affected counties.

Officials said crews have been pumping water out of the reservoir, a controlled discharge into surrounding
waterways that is meant to lower the reservoir’s volume and reduce water pressure in the event of a total
failure.

More than 23,500 gallons per minute — more than 33 million gallons of water per day — were being
pumped out of the pond, DeSantis said during a Sunday news conference. He said the Florida National
Guard was flying in additional pumps to accelerate the process.

Hopes said that the controlled release of water is “working” and that, with the additional pumps, officials
anticipate being able to double the amount of water they are discharging, but “we are not out of the
critical area yet.”

Officials said Sunday that about 300 million gallons of wastewater remain in the reservoir.

Brandi Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said the federal agency is
“closely monitoring the ongoing situation” and is in contact with DeSantis as well as the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection.

The EPA is also sending an “on-scene coordinator” to work with the local emergency management agencies
 g g y g g
and “coordinate EPA support, as necessary,” Jenkins said.

The Piney Point site was in operation starting in the 1960s, launched by Borden Chemical to process
phosphate, a component of fertilizer, the Bradenton Herald reported. It has been inactive since 2001.

But the area, now managed by a private company called HRK Holdings, still contains contaminated
material left from its years in operation. HRK Holdings could not be reached for comment; a company
voice mail was full, and an online contact form was not working Sunday.

In the process of turning phosphate into fertilizer, phosphogypsum — a slurry mixture that contains
uranium and is slightly radioactive — is left as a byproduct, said Matthew Pasek, a geoscience professor at
the University of South Florida.

“As a result, there’s lots of this waste product that is left over,” he said. “And you can’t do anything with it.”

To manage that waste product, the phosphogypsum is put into mountainous waste piles called gypsum
stacks. Ponds of phosphorous-rich wastewater sit on top of them. Such stacks are common in Florida, a
major hub for the phosphate mining industry dating to the late 1800s, Pasek said.

DeSantis said the wastewater being discharged into surrounding waterways is “not radioactive.” Pasek
said that is true in the sense that it cannot penetrate skin and would not hurt a person if the wastewater
splashed onto them. But he added that it is “slightly” radioactive and, on a long-term basis, “you wouldn’t
want to drink this water.”

Florida Environmental Protection Secretary Noah Valenstein said the water includes high levels of
phosphorus and nitrogen — nutrients that marine experts warn could fuel algae blooms.

“The goal is a controlled discharge to the Port of Manatee … that marine environment can better process
that,” Valenstein said.

Pasek said the worst-case scenario is that the reservoir ruptures and disrupts other Piney Point pools that
are not as treated. Another threat is the potential for algae blooms in the Tampa Bay and the gulf if the
wastewater spills in.

Jayne Gardiner, a marine biologist and associate professor of biology at New College of Florida, said one
concern is “potentially just a huge load of nutrients coming into the system.”

“Adding that much nitrogen to a system at once tends to fuel absolutely massive algae blooms — that’s
problematic on a number of levels,” Gardiner said. She said algae blooms tend to form large clumps that
can block light and the blooms consume oxygen.

“When you have a massive bloom, you can get very low oxygen levels overnight, and that can be fatal for
organisms that are breathing water,” she said.

Gardiner recalled Florida’s red-tide event in 2018, the state’s worst red tide in more than a decade, which
killed many marine animals.

“I don’t think anybody could forget what it looked like, what it smelled like — it was incredible,” she said.

“It’s hard to have a crystal ball and say this is what it’s going to look like,” she added. “Except we do know,
history has told us again and again, that this much nutrient loading into a system is generally pretty
disastrous.”

Hopes acknowledged that concerns about the site require a long-term solution.

“We will be moving forward to a permanent solution, into the future, once we mitigate the current risk,
which will probably include filling these ponds after they’ve been devoid of their contents and capping
them, leaving a permanent solution that this will not reoccur anytime in the future,” he said Sunday.

Pasek said the Piney Point situation could be a “wake-up call,” noting that there are many similar
phosphogypsum stacks in Florida.

“This is the problem with mining in general,” he said. “We like the products, but when the companies that
mine this stuff go out of business, who owns the waste products? And that is an excellent question.”

Pasek added: “Who has to pay for maintenance is also the big question.”

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