Adam Putnam presses for fix for Mosaic spill

Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam on Tuesday called for an immediate fix for the sinkhole at the Mosaic Fertilizer mine in Mulberry.

Gov. Rick Scott, who toured the site Tuesday, announced on Monday that he will introduce legislation in the next session that will require an immediate public notification of such potential environmental disasters. Putnam said it’s the right thing to do.

“I think that is important,” Putnam said in an interview after speaking to local business leaders. “Those neighbors deserve to know if there is a problem that could impact their health and well being. The most immediate and pressing issue obviously is to fix the problem. Withdraw that pollution and make sure that plume does not migrate beyond the boundaries of the site.”

Putnam said the next step, “is to get the engineers in the room and figure out how this will not happen again.”

Gypsum stacks, or piles, are regulated. Putnam said the government sets the standards on how they are constructed and maintained.

“If the standards the government set are inadequate, we need to know about it and we need to be able to fix it,” Putnam said.

In his address to the Manatee and Sarasota chambers of commerce, as well as the Lakewood Business Alliance, Putnam pushed an agenda to take care of Florida’s waters, education system and agricultural industry. Putnam said these are the keys to making Florida not only a destination for others, but to keep Florida’s next generations from leaving the state.

“I want Florida to become the jumping off point for the American dream,” he said.

Putnam, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2018, said most people view agriculture as, “An Old McDonald’s farm. There is a whole generation that doesn’t understand the notion of how we feed the world when agriculture is a high-tech, highly skilled industry.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2016 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Adam Putnam presses for fix for Mosaic spill."