Some residents in Manatee County, Florida, were evacuated from their homes over the Easter weekend, while officials cited fears that a wastewater lagoon could collapse “at any time”. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the area on Saturday.
County officials said the lake, located in the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant, has a “significant leak”, according to CBS affiliate WTSP-TV. The Manatee County Department of Public Security told people close to the plant must be evacuated due to an “imminent and uncontrolled release of wastewater”.
“A part of the containment wall at the spill site has changed laterally,” said Manatee Public Safety Director Jake Saur, “meaning that structural collapse can occur at any time.”
The Manatee County Department of Public Security initially sent emergency evacuation notices on Friday to those less than half a mile from Piney Point and, at 11am on Saturday, evacuation orders were extended to people less than one mile north of the reservoir’s phosphogypsum piles – a waste product fertilizer – and those within half a mile south of the site. Stretches of highway in the vicinity were also closed to traffic.
The mandatory evacuations were extended another half a mile to the west and a mile southwest of the site on Saturday night. The Manatee County Department of Public Security said 316 families are within the complete evacuation area.
Phosphogypsum is “radioactive waste” that is left over from processing phosphate ore in a state that can be used as a fertilizer, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
“In addition to the high concentrations of radioactive materials, phosphogypsum and processed wastewater may also contain carcinogens and heavy toxic metals,” the Center said in a statement on Saturday. “For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates 5 tonnes of radioactive phosphogypsum residues, which are stored in mountain piles hundreds of hectares wide and hundreds of meters high.”
Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said in a demonstration Saturday that “the public must heed this warning to avoid damage.”
Authorities are at the scene conducting a controlled release of water, about 22,000 gallons per minute.
The water currently being pumped by the authorities to prevent a total collapse is a mixture of sea water from a local dredging project, rainwater and rainwater. The water was not treated.
“The water meets the quality standards for marine waters, with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammoniacal nitrogen,” the state said in a statement. “It is slightly acidic, but not at a level that is expected to be a concern, even if it is toxic.”
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried wrote a letter to DeSantis on Saturday, calling for an emergency session from the Florida office to discuss the situation. She wrote that the water leak is “contaminated and radioactive waste water” and noted that the leak is not the first one on the property.
“For more than fifty years, this Central Florida mining operation has caused numerous disasters and incidents for human and environmental health,” wrote Fried. “There have been a number of well-documented failures – which continue today – to coat the property’s reservoir, including leaks, bad welds, holes, cracks and weaknesses that existed prior to the purchase by the current owner, HRK Holdings, and have been aggravated since.”
The video of a meeting of Manatee County Commissioners provided information about what happened before the leak. On Thursday afternoon, Jeff Barath, a representative for HRK Holdings, the company that owns the site, looked emotionally distressed as he informed Manatee County Commissioners about the situation.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He told the flight attendants that he only slept a few hours that week because he was trying to fix the situation and, in tears, said that he noticed for the first time “increased conductivity in the infiltration collection system at the site” 10 days before March 22 . This system, he said, offers drainage around the plaster piles.
He said he immediately notified the FDEP of his concerns.
“The water was changing around the infiltration. We entered into a very aggressive monitoring program, ”he said, to find out where the infiltration came from.
They found that the south side of the chimney system “increased in conductivity” and that the acidity of the water, which is normally around 4.6, dropped to about 3.5, which indicated a problem.
After a few days, the water chemistry did not improve and water flows increased from about 120 gallons per minute to more than 400 gallons per minute in less than 48 hours, said Barath. Last Saturday night, flow rates increased to “rates that I couldn’t even estimate for you,” he said.
The water was filling the piles so quickly that the soil was starting to rise, said Barath. This “bulge” was temporarily stabilized, but later extended for hundreds of meters.
Barath submitted a report to the state on March 26, according to the state website “Protecting Florida Together”, which was created by DeSantis to allow for more transparency on state water issues.
“I was predicting that the gypstack itself was destabilizing at a very fast pace and I recommended that we consider an emergency flush,” he told the commissioners. He said he feared that the system’s “excessive pressurization” would result in “complete failure”.
“I spent most of my days and nights constantly monitoring all aspects of this gypstack system and identifying points of failure within it,” he said, noting that points of failure happened “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 said that “the pipes in the facilities are repaired” and controlled discharges have been started to prevent any pressure build-up.
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 prevent a real catastrophe”.
On Friday, another leak was detected in the southern containment area of the facility. Despite night work to try to prevent this and other leaks, Manatee’s Director of Public Security, Jake Saur, said on Saturday that the situation was “escalating”.