Some residents in Manatee County, Florida, were evacuated from their homes over the Easter weekend, as officials cited fears that a sewage pond could collapse “at any time.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis he declared a state of emergency for the area on Saturday.
County officials said the pond, located at the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant, has a “significant leak,” according to CBS affiliate WTSP-TV. Manatee County Department of Public Safety he said people near the plant to evacuate due to an “imminent uncontrolled release of wastewater.”
“Part of the retaining wall at the leak site moved sideways,” said Jake Saur, Manatee’s director of public safety, “which means a structural collapse could occur at any time.”
The Manatee County Department of Public Safety initially issued emergency evacuation notices Friday for those half a mile from Piney Point and, at 11 a.m. Saturday, evacuation orders were extended. to people less than a mile north of the reservoir’s phosphogypsum piles, a fertilizer. waste products – and those less than half a mile south of the site. The area around the road was also closed to traffic.
On Saturday evening, mandatory evacuations were extended another half mile to the west and one mile southwest of the site. The Manatee County Department of Public Safety said 316 homes are in the full evacuation zone.
Phosphogypsum is the “radioactive waste” left over from processing phosphate ore into a state that can be used for fertilizers, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
“In addition to high concentrations of radioactive materials, phosphogypsum and processed wastewater may also contain carcinogens and heavy toxic metals,” the center said in a statement Saturday. “For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates 5 tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste, which is stored in mountainous mountains hundreds of hectares wide and hundreds of feet high.”
Vanessa Baugh, Manatee County Commissioner, said in a statement Saturday that the “public must heed this warning to avoid harm.”
Officials perform a controlled release of water, approximately 22,000 gallons per minute.
The water currently being pumped by officials to prevent a complete collapse is a mixture of seawater from a local dredging project, rainwater and rainwater. The water has not been treated.
“Water meets water quality standards for marine waters with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen,” the state said in a statement. “It’s slightly acidic, but not at a level that’s expected to be a concern, nor is it expected to be toxic.”
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried wrote a letter to DeSantis on Saturday urging an emergency session of the Florida cabinet to discuss the situation. He wrote that the leaking water is “contaminated and radioactive wastewater” and noted that this leak is not the first on the property.
“For more than fifty years, this mining operation in central Florida has caused numerous disasters and incidents to human health and the environment,” Fried wrote. “There have been numerous well-documented failures (which continue today) of the property deposit liner, including leaks, poor welds, holes, cracks and weak spots that existed prior to the current owner’s purchase, HRK Holdings, and they have worsened since then. ”
The video of a Manatee County commissioners meeting provided information about what happened before the leak. On Thursday afternoon, Jeff Barath, a representative of HRK Holdings, the company that owns the site, appeared emotionally distressed as he informed Manatee County commissioners about the situation.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. He told commissioners he had only slept a few hours that week because he was trying to fix the situation and, through tears, said he noticed “an increase in the conductivity of the site’s leak collection system” 10 days earlier on the 22nd of March. said, it offers drainage around the gypsum piles.
He said he immediately notified the FDEP of his concerns.
“The water was changing around the leaks. We went into a very aggressive control program,” he said, to find out where the leaks came from.
They found that the south side of the battery system had “increased its conductivity” and that the acidity of the water, which is typically around 4.6, had dropped to about 3.5, which indicated a problem.
After a few days, the water chemistry had not improved and the water flows increased from about 120 liters per minute to more than 400 liters per minute in less than 48 hours, Barath said. Last Saturday night, flows increased to “rates I couldn’t even estimate for you,” he said.
The water filled the piles so quickly that the ground began to rise, Barath said. This “bulge” stabilized temporarily but then spread to hundreds of feet.
Barath submitted a report to the state on March 26, according to the “Protecting Florida Together” website, which was created by DeSantis to allow for more transparency on state water issues.
“I anticipated that the gypstack itself would destabilize at a very fast pace and recommended that we consider an emergency discharge,” he told commissioners. He said he feared that “overpressuring” the system would result in a “complete failure.”
“I spent most of my days and nights constantly monitoring every aspect of this gypstack system and identifying fault points,” he said, noting that failure points passed “constantly, I mean every hour”.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection said it ordered the company to “take immediate action” to prevent further leaks. On March 30, the department he said “the pipes in the facility were repaired” and controlled discharges were initiated to prevent pressure buildup.
However, based on Barath’s testimony at the meeting, the situation was far from over. He concluded his speech by saying that they were doing “everything possible to avoid a real catastrophe”.
Another leak was detected on Friday in the southern containment area of the facility. Despite overnight work to try to stop this and other leaks, Manatee Public Safety Director Jake Saur said Saturday that the situation was “increasing.”