A crew from the Army Corps of Engineers and a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency have joined efforts to prevent the total collapse of a phosphate wastewater retention pond in Manatee County, Florida.
One of the Corps' drones with thermal imaging capabilities overnight detected a possible second breach in the gypsum walls surrounding the pond on the Piney Point industrial site, Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes said at a briefing Monday afternoon.
More than 300 homes around the site, which was once home to a fertilizer plant, were ordered evacuated over the weekend. Hopes said he didn't know yet when those residents would be allowed to return to their homes.
He said less than 300 million gallons remain in the pond. It contains a mixture of seawater, stormwater runoff and rain and "process water," leftover from the fertilizer manufacturing process.
The slightly acidic water meets quality standards for marine waters, Florida's Department of Environmental Protection has said, "with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen."
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Crews have been pumping millions of gallons from the pond to reduce pressure on the walls and prevent them from collapsing. That water is being pumped to Port Manatee on Tampa Bay.
Hopes said the amount of water being pumped to the bay could more than double — to 75 to 100 million gallons a day — when pumps added over the weekend are switched on Monday afternoon.
"When I see (that) water flowing into Tampa Bay, frankly, it makes me sick about it," said U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, who joined county officials at Monday's briefing.
Buchanan, a Republican who represents Manatee and parts of Hillsborough and Sarasota counties, flew over the retention pond and parts of Tampa Bay on Monday morning.
"This impacts the region," the congressman said, adding that he's concerned about the impact pumping the polluted water into the bay will have on marine life.
A reservoir near the old Piney Point phosphate mine was in danger of collapsing on Saturday, April 3, 2021 in Bradenton, Florida. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency after a significant leak at the wastewater pond threatened to flood roads and homes and wash into Tampa Bay.
(Tiffany Tompkins/The Bradenton Herald via AP)The phosphorus and nitrogen in the wastewater can cause or worsen algae blooms and red tide that can lead to massive fish kills and, in some cases, make humans sick.
Buchanan said he saw what he thought were algae blooms near Port Manatee during his helicopter tour.
Algae quickly multiply in bays and rivers that see an overabundance of nitrogen and phosphorus, especially in warm, calm weather. Blooms of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, sickened people and killed scores of marine life around Florida in 2018. The situation became so bad, then-Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for seven South Florida counties.
On Monday, Buchanan said the pond at Piney Point "unfortunately, could have been dealt with over the years," he said.
The pond sits in large mound that is known as a gypsum stack that is made of phosphogypsum, a byproduct of the fertilizer made at the plant from the 1966 until 2001. The site is now owned by HRK Holdings, which has taken responsibility for disposal of the contaminated material in the ponds on the site, according to the Bradenton Herald.
Florida has more than two dozen gypsum stacks around the state, and the polluted ponds sitting in many of them have caused environmental problems before.
In 2016, a sinkhole opened in a stack in Mulberry, Florida, dumping 215 million gallons of wastewater into the Floridan Aquifer, a source of much of the state's drinking water.
In 2004, Hurricane Frances ripped open a gypsum stack in Riverview, Florida, and 65 million gallons of wastewater flowed into a creek leading to Tampa Bay.
In 1997, a heavy rainstorm unleashed a spill at a gypsum stack near Mulberry, Florida, that spilled 56 million gallon of wastewater into the Alafia River, killing everything in its path for 42 miles, according to the Florida Phoenix. More than 1 million baitfish and shellfish, 72,900 gamefish and a number of alligators were killed.
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