FLORIDA PHOSPHATE INIATIATIVE
PHOSPHOGYPSUM DANGERS
A new post has often popped up on FaceBook lately—it is Phosphate Innovation Initiative — and it is full of lies and half-truths. Lies, because on the top of the home page is written “GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.” After development, the industry in Florida that is most destructive to the environment is phosphate mining.
Gypstacks are an on-going danger to humans, animals and our water. Tremendous fish-kills have happened in Tampa Bay, and the DEP has dumped huge amounts of radioactive wastewater from gypstacks into the Gulf of Mexico. Gigantic sinkholes have opened transmitting toxic wastewater into the aquifer where is it nearly impossible to retrieve. Our environmentally-destructive past government in Washington even proposed a plan to distribute toxic phosphogypsum into our roads, where rains would leach it into our waterways. Our current president has rightfully banned it again.
This website touts the need for fertilizer, the number of jobs it provides and the fact that some radiation is normally found in Florida soil. Half-truth: they fail to say that the gypstacks have a concentrated waste which is more toxic than that found in normal soil, as stated on the EPA’s own website.
They call for commercial uses of phosphogypsum in roadways and for zero waste by the phosphate industry by 2030. Similar tactics are used by Nestle, the American Beverage Association, Mosaic and others. Nestle/BlueTriton has called its lies “puffery” when legally challenged. Anyone who believes that the phosphate industry will have zero waste anytime soon is a fool. The industry has been trying for a hundred years to solve this problem and cannot.
This website boasts false impressions to insinuate rather than state, by using key words, none of which is true, such as:
zero waste, cleaner environment, healthy crops, environmental stewardship, responsible operations, innovation, sustainable future,
recycling, conservation, wildlife habitat
Along with these optimistic terms we have images of beautiful green crops and nature scenes. The mining process upturns the layers of soil to a depth of 30 to 60 feet, destroying everything growing and living there and disrupting even creeks and streams, which will never return to their natural state. Mined lands are suitable mostly for pasture as most crops cannot be successfully grown there.
Phosphate mining requires huge amounts of groundwater –White, Worthington and Kissingen springs are all now dead, likely because of mining withdrawals.
Another blatant lie: this website states that process water “…does not leave the facility.” It certainly does, as happened multiple times when it entered the Alafia River, poisoning 40 miles of the waterway, and was several times dumped into the Gulf of Mexico by our DEP, killing untold millions of aquatic animals in those instances.
This website also emphasizes that gypstacks are heavily regulated, which may be true, but we certainly know this does not prevent failures, spills, and pollution. Remember the New Wales giant sinkhole in 2016, when both Mosaic and our DEP employed a cover-up until finally caught nearly three weeks later.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says this on its website about gypstacks and process water:
“Some of the water can leak out the bottom and pollute local groundwater.”
“All uses of phosphogypsum waste have been banned unless the waste has very little radioactivity.” [This includes material for roads.]
Because the wastes are concentrated, phosphogypsum is more radioactive than the original phosphate rock.
Florida law also requires that home sellers provide a Radon Notification. Lawsuits have ensued where home sellers have sold homes on previously mined land.
Phosphate Innovation Initiative obviously feels deceiving the public is necessary to cover up what they really are: the second most polluting industry in Florida. No number of deceptions, pretty pictures and false descriptions can change this fact.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
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