DeSantis Promises Permanent Solution for Piney Point

MANATEE COUNTY – On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he was directing the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to put together a plan to close the former phosphate processing plant at Pine Point permanently.

"Today, I'm redirecting $15.4 million dollars from existing appropriations at DEP to be used for innovative technologies to pretreat water at the site for nutrients so that in the event that further controlled discharges are needed, any potential adverse environmental impacts such as algal blooms and fish kills are mitigated," said DeSantis at a news briefing.

Beyond DeSantis's initial $15.4 million commitment, Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson said he is working closely with the Governor and DEP staff to formulate an appropriations request of $100 million for legislators to consider as a first installment payment this year. If more is needed, Florida lawmakers will include any additional needs as part of next year's budget.

After a leak was discovered late last month, the FDEP issued an emergency order authorizing the release of hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater from the Piney Point phosphogypsum stack and ponds into a channel at Port Manatee in order to avoid the imminent threat of an even more catastrophic release of wastewater that threatened to flood Port Manatee, the Manatee County Jail and surrounding businesses and residences.

Constructed as a phosphate processing plant by Borden Chemical in 1966, operations at the site have long plagued the adjacent waterways, its fluoride-laden waste nearly eviscerating nearby Bishop Harbor’s ability to function as something of a nursery for the marine-life food chain within a decade of its opening. By the early 1980s, increased demand and production led to tainted grass that was thought to have caused fluorosis in the cattle who grazed on nearby pastures.

In 1989, a holding tank leaked 23,000-gallons of sulfuric acid, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people, including workers at Port Manatee. In 1991, air releases of sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide created an acid cloud that sickened more than 30 people in the vicinity. Through those years, the site passed through multiple companies’ ownership, the last of which filed for bankruptcy in 2001, eventually leaving the abandoned site under the stewardship of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

In 2003, FDEP got federal approval to pump millions of gallons of treated wastewater from one of the ponds on the site out into the Gulf of Mexico in an effort to alleviate the pond's ability to overflow or cause leaks once operations had been shuttered. In 2006, current owner HRK Holdings purchased the 600-plus acre property. From 2005 through 2009, a $140 million project was undertaken with the goal of reclaiming the land, and the gypsum stack ponds were lined with 80-millimeter high-density plastic so that dredged material and spoilage from the expansion of Port Manatee could be disposed of.

However, a 2011 leak caused by a liner tear sent millions of gallons of nutrient-rich water into Tampa Bay each day for weeks on end, totaling somewhere around 170 million gallons by the time it was repaired. On May 29 of that year, FDEP authorized discharges from the giant gypsum stack, hoping to assure their structural integrity. The runoff–contaminated with the heavy metal, cadmium, and high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen–made its way to Bishop Harbor, part of the Terra Ceia Aquatic Buffer Preserve.

For the past several years, officials have warned that the stacks' capacity to absorb additional rainwater was running out and that while a few years' worth of room existed under normal rainfall conditions, one hurricane or slow-moving tropical storm could quickly change that. A spray dispersal technique was attempted but proved too slow to be effective.

At an April 6 meeting, Manatee County Commissioners unanimously authorized the use of a deep injection well on county-owned property directly south of the Piney Point site across Buckeye Road. The county says that the action gives the BOCC "total control" over the well and allows the county to dictate the quality of the water before it goes into the well. Using deep-well injection technology for this purpose is not without controversy and many environmental groups have opposed its use at Piney Point.