News

Be Informed.

Member Portal

Bradford Meeting Monitored

BradfordMay6 2019 In: Bradford Meeting Monitored | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River

BradfordMay6 2019 In: Bradford Meeting Monitored | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River

Routine business at Bradford Co. this morning, May 6, 2019, with no news from the mine application.  Present to witness any news were mine opponents Kate Ellison,  Tom Germano, Paul and Cathy Still and your historian.

As we have done on occasion, we will set forth here the message we gave the good commissioners, a reminder of what may lie in wait for them should they decide to accept the mine permit.

———

The Florida Industrial and Phosphate Research Institute  is located in Bartow, FL and is funded in part by Mosaic Phosphate company.   Interestingly, even though funded by the phosphate industry, our DEP sometimes commissions it to do research for them regarding dangers from phosphate mining.

The following quotes are from their website.

Most of the radioactivity found in water resulting from the mining and processing of phosphate will be in the process water at the chemical processing plant with the phosphoric acid and it is not significant to public health. This water also does not go off site. It stays on the property and is recycled in the chemical processing.

Contrary to the last statement, we know of many examples when the water has gone off site during spills and sinkholes.

Here is another example of millions of gallons going off site:

In spring 2003 the DEP received an emergency permit from the EPA to barge millions of gallons of treated water from the Piney Point stack 190 miles into the Gulf of Mexico and dump it. DEP sought the permit because the reverse osmosis process being used to clean the water was not working fast enough to avoid a spill during the rainy season. Many groups including the sponge fishing industry in Tarpon Springs opposed the dumping.

Here we have millions of gallons of poisonous water so we dump it in the Gulf killing its creatures.  The world should have sued the USA.  The rich people who made that mess got off scott free.

This is another example of a point I have been making time after time, and that is that it is not good enough to say that our DEP will protect us from the mine.

The DEP does not protect the water, not the animals in the Gulf of Mexico, not the people and it will not protect Bradford County.

The Department of Environmental Protection does not protect the environment, it protects the mine industry,

Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
-A river is like a life: once taken, it cannot be brought back-


 

You might be interested in …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Skip to content