Florida ‘backing off’ from Piney Point cleanup, pressures site owner for shutdown plan
Florida’s top environmental leaders have taken a step back from managing the cleanup of the troublesome Piney Point industrial site, according to an update from Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes.
State officials have remained silent about the former phosphate plant just south of Manatee County’s border with Hillsborough on Tampa Bay. Earlier this year, a leak led to 215 million gallons of contaminated water pouring into the bay.
After announcing a commitment to clean and close the site as quickly as possible, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection stopped providing daily updates to the public. The agency had posted its last Piney Point update on July 7 before it followed up with new information on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Council of Governments meeting on Thursday with Manatee County’s municipal leaders, Hopes shared that the Department of Environmental Protection has taken a back seat in cleanup efforts, while leaning on the property owner, HRK Holdings, LLC, to resolve the environmental disaster.
“The important point about what’s going on is that FDEP is backing off a little bit. They’ve sort of given control back to HRK. They’re turning the screws to HRK to give them a plan on how to manage this,” Hopes said. “They’re still monitoring it. We are still monitoring it, but they are basically ratcheting down on HRK to deliver to them a plan on how they’re managing this.”
An FDEP spokesman did not immediately provide updated information regarding Piney Point’s cleanup on Wednesday. However, several hours later, the agency posted its first public update on the site in almost a month.
“DEP continues its oversight of HRK’s onsite water management activities to safely control water levels, respond to rainfall events and support water treatment,” the update said. “DEP will continue to monitor current and future weather conditions and ensure HRK adjusts water management strategies as needed.”
According to the update, approximately 266 million gallons of water currently remain within the site’s largest reservoir. It is the highest amount of water reported there since April. A temporary fix remains in place to keep the leaky pond patched.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis previously announced his support for closing the site, which is estimated to cost at least $100 million.
The former phosphate processing plant had been a nuisance site for decades. After it was abandoned in 2001, its former owners left behind materials that aren’t easy to dispose of.
After phosphate rock is mined, it has to go through a factory to extract phosphorus, which is a key ingredient in fertilizer. Gypsum is a toxic byproduct of that process. Because gypsum is slightly radioactive and cannot be used for any other purpose, it is stacked in huge mounds and covered with a thick plastic liner.
Extracting the phosphorus also creates large amounts of process water, which becomes rich in nutrients after it helps run the factory’s machinery. For years, those giant ponds continued to collect additional water through rainfall.
By the end of March, the Piney Point site still held 800 million gallons of process water. Around that time, site operators found a leak in one of the gypsum stacks that threatened to destabilize the entire system. Without the emergency authorization to send contaminated water into Tampa Bay, engineers said the leak could have created a major flood.
Since then, crews have worked to temporarily seal the leak while working to treat the water still on the site. As of June 3, about 220 million gallons of water had been treated, according to the FDEP.
Despite the progress in sealing the leak, the gypsum stack that threatened to collapse due to the leak remains in poor condition, according to Hopes, the county administrator.
“I will tell you that it’s still a struggle,” he said. “The stack is not in the best shape in the world.”
Hopes said he speaks with FDEP’s acting secretary at least two times a week to discuss the Piney Point response. State officials have been willing to allow Manatee County “to drive what the closure looks like for us,” he said.
“The general theme I’ve been hearing from most of the experts is the stacks would be de-watered, there would be a new liner laid, there would be a clay cap, there would be two to three feet of topsoil and sod. You would have a relatively flat surface where you basically have stormwater runoff,” Hopes said. “We could look at recovering usable property around Piney Point.”
“My expectation is to have the highest soccer fields and BMX park in Manatee County and usable property, including the railroad tracks, would revert to Manatee County for industrial development of the port area,” he said.
According to Hopes, the cleanup process is ongoing. FDEP hired at least two innovative water treatment companies to remove the nutrients from the water so that it is safe to be released. However, only stormwater has been released from the site since April 9.
This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 3:34 PM.
