DISASTER

Discharges of polluted wastewater from Piney Point into Tampa Bay reduced by 90%

Zac Anderson
Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Discharges of polluted water into Tampa Bay from the old Piney Point fertilizer plant site in Manatee County have decreased by more than 90%, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday.

“Today we have been able to turn off the two siphons and have reduced the discharge flow to Port Manatee,” said DEP spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller.

The flow of polluted water to the port is now down to 5 million gallons per day, the DEP said.

The big reduction in discharges of polluted water into the natural environment appears to be another important turning point in the Piney Point disaster, which began last week when the liner in a wastewater containment pond began leaking and a breach opened in the pond wall, causing polluted water to run out the side.

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DEP began pumping water out of the containment pond and dumping it into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee to alleviate pressure on the pond wall and avert a complete collapse that would inundate surrounding areas with tainted floodwaters. Engineers determined Tuesday that there no longer was a risk of catastrophic flooding and Manatee County lifted evacuation orders while reopening most roads in the area.

DEP’s eased pumping and dumping of the polluted water is a hopeful sign that the environmental impacts also could soon be contained.

Miller said roughly 202 million gallons of wastewater have been dumped into Tampa Bay and about 232 million gallons remain in the pond.

A DEP team has been working to repair the pond liner. Miller said the team “identified a seam separation on the east wall of the compartment.

“We’ve get contract crews on site working to make necessary repairs to the liner and contain the flow,” Miller added.

The Piney Point phosphogypsum stacks, looking to the east.

There also are efforts underway to treat any polluted water before it is discharged.

“Teams are now deploying nutrient reduction and removal treatments of the water on-site to address any required discharges in the future,” DEP said in a press release. “This will significantly reduce nutrient loading to Port Manatee and help minimize water quality impacts.”

As DEP works to stop the wastewater discharges, state officials are moving forward with plans to clean up Piney Point and close the site to preclude any future problems.

The Florida Senate amended a budget plan this week to include language aimed at providing full funding for the Piney Point cleanup, which is estimated to cost $200 million. The money will come from the recent $1.9 trillion federal COVID-19 stimulus program.

Cleaning up the site requires draining three wastewater ponds, safely disposing of the water and then closing the phosphogypsum stack that the ponds sit atop.

State officials had the opportunity to completely close the site two decades ago, in 2001, when a previous owner went bankrupt and the state took over operations at Piney Point. Instead, DEP later turned the property over to another private investor to try to make it financially viable. That owner also went bankrupt.

Appearing before a state House committee Wednesday evening, DEP Secretary Noah Valenstein implied that his agency erred when it didn’t close Piney Point years ago.

Valenstein said state leaders now have another chance to close Piney Point “fully and be done with it as opposed to a partial closure and then possible reinvention of the site with continued risk there.

“I think that is clearly the most important lesson to learn, and make sure that the long history of Piney Point is over, that there’s not another chapter that’s allowed to be written about this site, not another reinvention. But certainly if you’re going to learn one thing, it’s that you have to simply close a site, and that it’s worth the state putting the funds in to complete that closure.”

Please follow Herald-Tribune Political Editor Zac Anderson on Twitter at @zacjanderson. He can be reached at zac.anderson@heraldtribune.com