Florida officials have been fighting over the past week after a sewage pond at the former Piney Point phosphate mining facility caused a major leak, a situation officials described as a potential “catastrophe.” . Although officials have managed to drain the reservoir enough for a “tidal wave“Sewage did not flood the area,” experts told CBS News that the threat to the environment remains.
Residents living immediately around the area are physically safe at the moment, state officials said, but millions of gallons of water have flowed to the ground and local waterways and millions more were pumped directly into Port Manatee, an entrance to Tampa Bay, Florida. west coast, to prevent the reservoir from collapsing.
From March 26 to April 9, approximately 237 million gallons of water were leaked or intentionally discharged from the reservoir, the state department of the environment said. Officials stopped pouring water into the port on Friday, according to the state’s water quality control panel.
The water was determined to have no harmful levels of radioactive material and officials have said the tank water meets “seawater quality standards” except for pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen “.
When questioned by CBS News, the state’s environmental department did not specify what the water quality standards are for both the facilities and the marine waters. “It is slightly acidic, but not at a level that is expected to be a concern,” the department said in a statement. “Field operations teams are now implementing on-site water nutrient reduction and removal treatments to address necessary discharges in the future. This will significantly reduce the nutrient load at Port Manatee and help minimize impacts on water quality “.
Dr. Henry Briceño, a professor and researcher on water quality at Florida International University, who has several degrees in geological engineering, told CBS News that despite what officials say, water does not meet the requirements. water quality standards and officials should not “try to play with people.”
“Nutrient concentrations are much higher than the receiving water mass,” he said in reference to Port Manatee. “These waters are not within Tampa Bay’s normal, regular water quality criteria.”
The nutrients of most concern when it comes to wastewater, which are a combination of salt water from a local dredging project, process water, and stormwater, are nitrogen and phosphorus. While both are essential for plant life, excessive amounts can destroy ecosystems, experts say.
A joint statement issued this week by environmental groups Suncoast Waterkeeper and Tampa Bay Waterkeeper estimated that the amount of nutrients entering Tampa Bay was equal to “about 100,000 bags of fertilizer” and that “wastewater” has about ten times the nitrogen of the dirty water. “These figures, according to the groups, are based on recent samples and nitrogen levels may vary along the water column.
Jenna Stevens, state director of Environment Florida, described the impact of this “nutrient contamination” on CBS News.
“Every body of water has a certain amount of pollution that can take a long time before things get very, very bad and we start to see big water quality problems. And that amount of nutrient pollution can be very harmful.” , said Stevens. “When [officials] I was told, “Oh well, it’s no more acidic than a cup of coffee,” well, it still doesn’t meet water quality standards for marine waters. It’s too acidic for our waterways and it’s too loaded with these pollutants. ”
The Tampa Bay Estuary program, which tracks water data near Piney Point, says in its online database that they are most concerned about the total increase in nitrogen and ammonia coming in. in coastal waters due to the drastic impact these nutrients can have on ecosystem health. Nitrogen concentrations above 5-10 milligrams per liter can be problematic, according to the program, and reports show that water was recorded near Piney Point with significantly higher nitrogen levels.
On March 31, five days after the Piney Point-owning company filed a report on the state that water was seeping into the gypsum pile containing the water, a sample of Piney Point water Creek, which initially filtered wastewater, recorded 191.5 milligrams per liter of nitrogen, an amount more than 19 times higher than the indicated limit. Another nearby point recorded 214.4 milligrams per liter, which is more than 21 times higher, according to the database.
According to environmental officials, the total nitrogen concentration in seawater should be limited to 0.74 milligrams per liter.
One week later, on April 7, officials said “high levels of phosphorus” were detected at Port Manatee, where sewage from the Piney Point swamp was being dumped. An April 5 water sample detected 2.1 milligrams per liter of orthophosphate, a form of phosphorus. This level is 21 times higher than the marine phosphorus quality standard, which is 0.10 milligrams per liter. Other samples taken from the port at that date also had levels at least twice the standard threshold.
Stevens, of Environment Florida, is afraid of what this spill, or any other, in the future, could do in Tampa Bay, which for decades has been the focus of restoration and protection after being disastrously polluted in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, locals, the state, and the federal government made great efforts to revitalize the area.
Tampa Bay Estuary Program
One of the priorities of these efforts was to maintain adequate nitrogen levels. An excessive amount of nutrients causes more algae, which reduces the amount of light that can enter the water. Algae blooms, Briceño explained, create a devastating cascading effect on marine life, as algae change oxygen levels as it continues to expand, even as it dies and rots.
“It’s a mechanism that feeds itself and is continuous,” Briceño said, adding that he “won’t be surprised” if that happens.
Environmental officials told CBS News on Saturday that there are “visual observations” of the rise in algae in the water.
“Algae flower samples have been collected with great caution and are currently being processed,” they said.
And if it does, it will also negatively affect seaweed, a vital plant for the Tampa Bay ecosystem. Marine herbs, along with being a vital source of food and habitat for manatees and other marine species, are essential for improving overall water quality.
It takes decades and millions of dollars to restore seaweed, and all it takes, Stevens said, is extra acidity to end it all.
“Much of our way of living here in Florida is about our time on the water … It’s where we go outside and enjoy our lives,” Stevens said. “For decades, scientists and advocates have said this is a problem and that pollutants were not held responsible. And now, Floridians have to pay the price for their mess.”
And if the seagrass goes, it could endanger Florida manatees, which are an endangered species that is in the middle of an unexpected death event, according to the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service. Between January 1 and April 2, more than 600 dead manatees were found. Between 2016 and 2020, the population made an average of 203 deaths annually.
Experts believe that manatees ’access to food is a contributing factor, though not the only reason, to sudden death.
“Obviously, more studies are needed to fully determine what the causes of all these deaths are,” Stevens said, “but what we’re seeing leads us to believe that these manatees are running out of food, that they can starve to death. due to the loss of marine herbs statewide. “
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has made similar statements, noting that food loss is a “contributing factor” to manatee deaths.
“Seaweed like many plants requires sunlight to grow,” the commission says on its website. “Since 2011, the persistence of algae blooms has reduced the clarity of the water and the penetration of light which caused a dramatic reduction in seaweed. Seaweed is the main food for manatees in these systems “.
The Florida Senate voted to assign it $ 3 million for fiscal year 2021-2022 to help clean up Piney Point wastewater. But the funds, if included in the final budget, would not be available until July 1, a month after the hurricane season officially began.
Tropical storms and hurricanes pose a greater risk to local and environmental safety around Piney Point, as strong storms can cause damage to overflows in ponds and infrastructure. These storms have become more frequent and intense over the years, and this year the National Hurricane Center will begin routinely monitoring the tropical climate.
Todd Crowl, director of the Environmental Institute at Florida International University, said that while the discharge of wastewater into Port Manatee is bad, ecosystems can usually recover as long as they do not infiltrate. continuously.
“But if you hit him once and hit him again in a fairly short time,” he said, “he never has time to fully recover.”
Tampa Bay, he said, is “dangerously close” to this problem, and a hurricane that strikes before the system can recover can cause more permanent damage.
It could take months to see all the effects of the wastewater dump, but Briceño fears the ramifications will affect South Florida’s already fragile waters.
“That’s what I’m afraid we can have in these ecosystems … that we go beyond these turning points,” he said. “And then we don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s not going to be good, for sure.”