Life at Piney Point resumes as flood threat eases, but green water piped into bay
Manatee County residents resumed their daily routines Wednesday, with homes and businesses no longer at risk of being inundated with contaminated water from Piney Point’s largest retention pond, according to federal engineers.
But by late Wednesday, water samples in Tampa Bay were beginning to show elevated levels of phosphorus, which could lead to algae blooms such as red tide that can harm marine life and wreck tourism.
For about four days, residents and businesses near the former phosphate processing plant were ordered to leave amid the threat of an imminent collapse of the south holding pond after a breach was found in a portion of the wall. More than 300 homes were under evacuation orders. But while 137 residents and their pets accepted shelter at a local hotel, many others stayed put.
Inundation maps produced Tuesday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showed that flooding from a collapse would be isolated to the site, nearby farmland and Buckeye Road. As a result, the only remaining closure as of Wednesday was along Buckeye Road from U.S. 41 to Oneil Road.
Residents were given the all-clear to return to their homes and businesses late Tuesday.
At the height of the threat, a collapse could have sent a wall of water up to 20 feet high barreling toward homes and businesses.
As of 4 p.m. on Wednesday, about 258 million gallons were still in the south pond, down from more than 400 million gallons several days ago, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Water is now being pumped out at a rate of 38 million gallons per day.
But the pond continues to leak, FDEP says. That leakage is being contained on the Piney Point site, where ditches are leading the water into a lined stormwater pond where it will eventually be treated and cleaned.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Florida Division of Emergency Management began using dive teams and an underwater ROV — a remotely operated vehicle — “to get a more accurate understanding of the structural makeup of the seepage site and to identify the source,” according to an internal county memo. That analysis would be used to determine if they could patch the hole “either by utilizing dive teams to place a patch, or by utilizing gravity and unrolling the patch onto the source of the leak.”
Meanwhile, water is also still being pumped out to Tampa Bay, released into the channel near Port Manatee. That water — lime green in appearance — spewed out of a giant pipe, creating lots of foam before careening down a ditch and into bay waters.
As of late Wednesday afternoon, about 173 million gallons had already been discharged into the bay through the port.
Since initially discovering a leak in the reservoir, FDEP approved an emergency order allowing site managers to drain the pond into Tampa Bay.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has begun posting online results from its water sampling from various points inside Port Manatee and nearby in various spots along Tampa Bay. However, many key figures in those test results, such as ammonia and nitrogen levels, are still pending. Until those data points are available, it’s hard to predict what impact the contaminated water will have on the bay.
“Basically, there’s a lot of data missing still,” said Larry Brand, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
This story was originally published April 7, 2021 at 11:52 AM.
