Manatee County power failure spills thousands of gallons of Piney Point wastewater
A power outage at Manatee County’s pretreatment facility forced the release of 6,000 gallons of untreated Piney Point wastewater, according to a pollution report filed with state officials.
The spill, which has been reported to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, happened around 11:30 a.m. Thursday when a breaker tripped, cut power to the plant and left workers without a way to communicate.
During the outage, workers discovered a transfer pump continued to send 6,000 gallons of wastewater from Piney Point to the pretreatment plant, which is meant to remove certain hazardous elements from the water before an injection well sends it thousands of feet below the surface.
The spill stopped about 10 minutes later when workers manually shut off the pump. The wastewater later soaked into the ground and did not leave the site, according to the report.
Piney Point, a former phosphate processing plant in Palmetto, has been an environmental hazard for decades. In 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis directed over $100 million toward the final closure of the site, which holds millions of gallons of hazardous water.
Last year, Manatee County Government completed the construction of an underground injection well to dispose of the site’s wastewater.
Site operators closed the first of four massive ponds at Piney Point in September. The remaining ponds could be emptied by early 2025, site leaders previously told the Bradenton Herald.
ManaSota-88, a public health and environmental group, called on Manatee County and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to do more to fight against pollution.
“All wells are subject to failure and there are too many unknowns to safely inject treated or partially treated effluent,” the group said in a statement. “The operation of a deep well relies very heavily on predictions and good faith.”
According to the pollution report, site staff began investigating why the backup power source and fail-safe controls did not activate.
This story was originally published March 22, 2024 at 4:17 PM.