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‘No community should suffer this’: Florida’s toxic breach was decades in the making
A leak at an abandoned fertilizer plant is just the latest development at a site that has polluted the area since it was built
www.theguardian.com
It’s been a week since a significant leak at a long-abandoned fertilizer plant in the Tampa Bay area threatened the surrounding groundwater, soil, and local water supplies.
Last weekend, officials ordered more than 300 families living near the 676-acre Piney Point plant site in Manatee county to evacuate. The sheriff even emptied out his jail’s first floor of inmates in case a “20-foot wall of water” came rolling their way.
By Monday, local officials said they thought the crisis had been averted; they lifted evacuation orders on Tuesday afternoon. But what they meant was that imminent catastrophe had been postponed. The long-term, slow-moving crisis of toxicity, decades in the making, remains – and is echoed at dozens of radioactive ponds across the state.
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This is another case of radioactive waste generated during phosphate mining, one of FL's biggest industries.