By now, you must all be aware of the potential disaster unfolding in Manatee County, Florida, where an imminent breach at the industrial waste site at Piney Point threatens to spill hundreds of millions of toxic water in surrounding communities and environmentally sensitive areas. Evacuation orders and road closure notices have been issued, while engineers race to make repairs and to pump millions of gallons of water out of the toxic pond and release it into Tampa Bay.
On Sunday, Acting Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes said that a worst-case scenario could send a 20-foot surge of water flooding from the site.
On Monday, a second potential leak/breach was announced. The Army Corp of Engineers and EPA experts have been brought in to help.
The immediate plan seems to be to pump out the waste water sitting in the pond above the phosphogypsum stack into Tampa bay, untreated. They have been pumping 22,000 gallons per minutes, which equates to 32 million gallons per day. 32 m gallons will cause the water level to drop by about 15 inches. The rate will be doubled or tripled by the end of today. At this rate, the remaining 300 million gallons of toxic water could be pumped out in another week. Perhaps, that is the overall plan — use this crisis to dump the water into the bay and then close the ponds. The governor referring to the toxic water as “mixed seawater” hints at that solution.
The title image shows what the Phosphogypsum stacks at Piney Point look like, filled with what’s known as process water. The stack rises 70+ feet above the surrounding area; the pond is about 20 feet deep, the surface of the water is probably around 50 feet above ground. The leak is from the large pond in the foreground (left is South-west).
Some more heavy pumps were flown in to help remove water from the pond. They have been pumping out water into the bay for several days already, untreated.
Some of the terms and concepts used in the stories are unfamiliar and there is a good bit of confusion about what it all means. So, I decided to do a little research (thanks Google) and try to understand the topic a bit more. Here is my attempt, as a non-expert, to summarize the situation and also to understand it from a broader perspective. Please feel free to point out mistakes and to add more info and insights.
What is Phosphogypsum?
Phosphogypsum is a solid chemical produced as a waste product in the production of fertilizer from phosphate rock.
As you all know, inorganic fertilizer is a key driver of modern agriculture and responsible for the “Green Revolution” that increased agricultural production worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s. Modern fertilizer contains 3 key ingredients — Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K). Fertilizers containing these key elements are produced in separate industrial processes and blended for final use.
Phosphorus fertilizers are produced from phosphate rocks, through a process, that generates phosphoric acid from the minerals in the rocks. The phosphoric acid is then combined with ammonia, as shown in the diagram below to make the final granular product.
This process also generates a lot of Phosphogypsum, 5 times as much as the phosphoric acid itself. Phosphogypsum is mainly composed of gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O), a widely used material in the construction industry. But phosphogypsum is not allowed for such use by the EPA, since it is weakly radioactive, because of the presence of naturally occurring uranium and thorium, and their daughter isotopes radium, radon, polonium, etc. in the phosphate ore.
What are Phosphogypsum stacks?
Somewhere between 100 and 280 million tons of phosphogypsum are estimated to be produced annually worldwide. In Florida, about 30 million tons are generated each year.
What is done with these millions of tons of phosphogypsum (aka PG)?
It is stored as phosphogypsum stacks, flat-topped mounds of the material, rising up to 200 feet high and covering some 400 acres. Truckloads of the material are spread and compacted on top of the heap. This is their final resting place, forever (?!).
Sometime in the last century, the industry figured out that the stack could also be used to store waste water generated in the fertilizer plants, by creating a lined pond on top of the stack. Hence, most stacks are topped by a pond of acidic water from 40 to 80 acres in size.
In Florida, there are about 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum stacked in 25 separate stacks.
Phosphogypsum Radioactivity
In 1989, the EPA banned the use of phosphogypsum in industrial products. In 1992, this rule was modified to allow the use of phosphogypsum with an average radium-226 concentration of less than 10 picocuries/gram (pCi/g) for agricultural application as a soil amendment.
Central Florida phosphogypsum ranges from 20-35 pCi/g, so it needs to be stacked. North Florida phosphogypsum has only 5 to 10 pCi/g and is sold to peanut farmers who use it to provide the calcium needed to form strong peanut shells.
As explained at fipr.floridapoly.edu/…, the radioactivity level is relatively low, comparable to levels of radioactivity experienced in our daily lives. It also points out that the average two-pack-a-day smoker subjects himself or herself to about 80 times the dose from PG because of the inhaled radioactivity in the tobacco leaves, which itself is related to phosphate based fertilizers.
Some countries allow use of phosphogypsum in road construction and gypsum boards.
The EPA under the trump administration approved the use of phosphogypsum for road construction in 2020.
Is the water in the pond radioactive as well?
The manufacture of phosphoric acid requires a large volume of water. The waste water is commonly referred to as process water. The process water is quite acidic (Ph = 1 to 2, lower than 7 is acidic) and contains a dilute mixture of phosphoric, sulfuric, and fluosilicic acids. It is saturated with calcium sulfate and contains numerous other ions found in the phosphate rock used as a raw material, as well as ammonia from the solid fertilizer manufacturing process. fipr.floridapoly.edu/…
This pond also contain seawater, as a result of material from a dredging operation of the sea port which was dumped into the pond.
Radioactivity in the process water has been downplayed by authorities, perhaps because it has a relatively low concentration of radioactive elements and the water in the pond does not come in direct contact with the surrounding radioactive phosphogypsum.
The acidity and radioactivity of the water has probably reduced over time as some of the water has been drained and replaced with rain water.
But this water, if not treated to bring down its acidity level (lime has been used for that purpose), can be quite harmful to vegetation, soil, humans, animals and marine life. The nutrients in the water will lead to algae blooms in the bay.
One of the puzzling aspects of this crisis is the lack of a public disclosure about testing the water for contaminants. One might think that it is one of the first things that would be done before pumping out the water; heck, one might expect it to have been done every week over the past 20 years.
This is what water leaking out of the Piney Point pond looks like -
Phosphates and Florida
Phosphate has been a part of Florida’s economy for more than a century. First discovered in the Peace River by a Corps of Engineers captain in 1881, Florida’s phosphate deposits today form the basis of an $85-billion industry that supplies three-fourths of the phosphate used in the United States. www.sarasotamagazine.com/…
Mosaic is the largest producer of finished phosphate products with an annual capacity greater than the next two largest producers combined. Mosaic has approximately 16.8 million tonnes of operational capacity for finished concentrated phosphates. They own mining sites and processing plants worldwide. This is one of their fertilizer plants in Mulberry Florida.
The History of Piney Point
It began in 1966 when Borden Chemical built an industrial plant to process phosphate.
In the next few decades, demand went up and so did phosphogypsum stacks.
The plant was later owned by Mulberry Corporation and ceased operations in 2001, at which point the property passed to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) through a court-appointed receivership. The site was purchased from the government by HRK Holdings, LLC in 2006 for $4.3 million and the requirement that they maintain the phosphogypsum stacks and contaminated ponds.
Hurricanes and rainfalls added to the woes of maintaining the site. Compounding the problem was a decision made in 2006 decision to expand Port Manatee and dump the dredged material into the PG stacks.
In 2001, as water levels rose due to Tropical Storm Gabrielle, 10 million gallons of water were released, carrying 16.2 tons of nitrogen into Bishop's Harbor, more than three times the annual nutrient budget for that bay sector. Nitrogen levels rose from 1 part per billion to 33 parts per billions, and chlorophyll levels increased from 10 to 25 parts per billion.
Today, we are talking about dump perhaps 480 million gallons of waste water into the Bay. The ecological impact will be disastrous.
In 2011, a tear in the liner on the PG stack sent 170 million gallons of process water into Bishop Harbor.
I am not sure how they expect the liner to contain the 100’s of millions of gallons of toxic water, forever.
HRK Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012 but is still operating.
In the past 2 decades, then there have been many episodes of leaks, repairs, releasing water into Tampa Bay, installing fresh lining in some of the ponds, deploying spray evaporative systems and closing up of some of the ponds. But no permanent solution. This is what it looked like in 2004 —
When the Piney Point facility was abandoned, its phosphogypsum stack system contained about 1.2 billion gal. of acidic process water, about half of which was stored in ponds on top of the gyp stacks or contained in adjacent above-grade cooling ponds. www.dailykos.com/...
2.35 billion gallons of water was removed by March 2007 using a combination of 6 different methods according to www.tbrpc.org/….
Water levels have been rising over the past few years due to rainfall; levels were close to the stack design limit in 2020, as shown below. The gray line is the design limit.
And now we have the latest set of leaks and the possibility of a catastrophic breach, which could spill not just toxic water but tons of radioactive phosphogypsum into the surrounding area and the bay.
From www.bradenton.com/… — “According to a third-party engineer hired by HRK, the leak is likely the result of a liner issue near the bottom of the pond. The leak has also led to the destabilization of the gypsum stacks.”
Here is a drone video of the area -
Future Plans
They have been planning for years now to clean up and close up these ponds, but there has been a lack of will and funding. Republican control of Florida politics has certainly not helped.
One of the plans discussed in 2013 was to dump the water into an underground injection well. FDEP officials were in support of that option, but commissioners backed down after members of the public raised concerns about the well leading to potential issues in the future.
But the board reversed course in December, voting to make a resolution to the process water ponds its No. 1 priority in the Florida Legislature just months after site operators warned they were running out of capacity. Commissioners hoped to secure up to $6 million in funding to pay for a cost-sharing “emergency water treatment” program, with an injection well listed as their preference.
At a briefing Friday night, Manatee County legislators promised to secure the funds and resources needed to get rid of the environmental problems at Piney Point.
See www.bradenton.com/… for more details.
How big is the problem worldwide?
This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, when it comes to the environmental destruction caused by mining and the industrial age.
The following graph shows the amount of fertilizer produced around the world. Where do we think all the waste matter is stored and how safe and secure do we think it is?
In 2020, the world mined over 11.2 billion tons of metal ores, and another 35.1 billion tons non-metallic minerals including fossil fuels. www.un.org/... Every mining and processing operation requires large amounts of land, water and energy, pollutes air and water and generates massive amounts of toxic by-products that cannot be easily recycled. There are mounds, land-fills and ponds of toxic sludge all over the world, but generally far from where most of us live.
How many more environmental disasters are waiting to occur, besides the ones that occur in slow motion and are too far off to attract attention?
In this documentary “Anthropocene”, the writers argue that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century, because of profound and lasting human changes to Earth.
Solutions?
Here is a recent book that offers some solutions to the Phosphorus problem. Take a look at the twitter thread for a synopsis of the book, where the authors shows how to achieve a sustainable "phosphoheaven" and avoid "phosphogeddon." The focus is on recovery and reuse of Phosphorus.
Epilogue
However, this is not the result of some conspiracy by evil oligarchs to destroy earth, but it is a consequence of the way our modern world works. We cannot do without our modern industrial products. The average person (present company at DK excluded) has no idea where the components of an iPhone come from, how many industries and people are involved in making its metal parts, its batteries, its display, cameras and computer chips. Or the industrial processes required to put food on the table or a car in the garage. It is a vast and far-flung undertaking, one that requires gigajoules of energy and generates giga amounts of waste.
It is a complex problem — feeding the world and satisfying its life-styles. We have not figured out yet how to do it without ravaging the earth. It is easy to lament and bemoan the current state of affairs but let’s talk of solutions — not pie-in-the-sky notions, but practical solutions, some already put into practice, others waiting to be discovered. I am sure many diaries have been written on the subject already at this site.
It is also clear that in our current form of society, industries cannot solve these problems on their own; free markets, left to their own devices, will result in a race to the bottom, to maximize profits and to minimize costs. It is lot less expensive to dump toxic waste into the nearest river or the ocean than it is to process it and recycle its contents. Only governments, nationally and internationally, can get the job done, with laws, treaties and enforced cooperation from industry. It is not an easy task since many of the governments are controlled by corporations and polluters. Science and technology will need to do some of the heavy lifting to provide some of the solutions, funded with taxes, that polluters need to pay. Resource efficiency, renewables, recovery, recycling and education will play important roles. So will booting out Republicans from office.
Let’s hear what you have to say.
Further Reading
- The Clock is Ticking on Florida’s Mountains of Hazardous Phosphate Waste — www.sarasotamagazine.com/…
- How did this crisis happen? A breach at Piney Point puts area in environmental peril — www.bradenton.com/…
- Phosphogypsum — en.wikipedia.org/.…
- Phosphogypsum – Waste or Resource? — nucleus.iaea.org/…
- Bone Valley — en.wikipedia.org/…
- Process Water — fipr.floridapoly.edu/…
-
Process engineering: Wastewater treatment plant goes the distance — www.chemicalprocessing.com/...
Updates
Some inmates at the county jail were relocated. The rest remain at the upper level in the facility.
That’s a lot of toxic water that has been dumped already into the bay. They might empty the pond in a week.
A second potential breach may have been detected. Pumping rate should double by tonight.
Here is a live video feed from Manatee County, showing footage of the scene using multiple cameras, including drone-based ones -