Tom Palmer of Ancient Islands Group Sierra Club has written the following optimistic view of the Florida Legislature’s approval of putting gypstack material in Florida public road beds.
This, of course, would help the polluting phosphate industry by helping reduce their very visible gypstack mountains dotting the Florida landscape. This idea has been pushed lately by the propagandistic Phosphate Innovative Initiative whose website is a disingenuine posterchild for greenwash (even their website is “designed with love”), ranking right up there with the plastics pushers.
So I ask you, how could any company whose website is designed with love possibly harm our environment?
The phosphate industry, which has had well over 100 years to fix their pollution problems, are desperately grasping at straws to find an excuse for somebody else to clean up their mess. Just as in the petroleum industry, which leaves their pumped-out wells behind, too often the taxpayer is left to foot the bill while they walk away laden down with profits.
Read Tom’s original article here at this link.
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
Radioactive Road Proposal Faces Roadblocks Aplenty
After the Florida Legislature passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation authorizing state transportation officials to test the feasibility of using a toxic byproduct of fertilizer production in Florida to build roads, it seemed that was that.
Wrong.
The Ledger in Lakeland reports that state officials and Mosaic, the fertilizer corporation that proposes to build test roads on its property, are awaiting review of this scheme by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA rules currently prohibit using this material called phosphogypsum for anything other than piling it up in stacks the size of small mountains.
Phosphogypsum is a waste product that is slightly radioactive and contains a number of toxic elements such as arsenic, lead, mercury and chromium.
The argument for using this material in roads is that it is not as dangerous as critics claim and that it could reduce road-building costs by eliminating the need to transport limerock, the material that has been traditionally used in Florida road-building projects, from far away mines elsewhere in Florida.
They could further argue this study is unnecessary because the material has already been used in building a road on the outskirts of Fort Meade decades ago. A subsequent investigation of the environmental impacts by the University of Miami reportedly found no problems.
Mosaic certainly has an incentive to push this through because as things stand now, it is financially responsible until the end of time for monitoring and managing these stacks. This is an expense the corporation would be happy to shed.
Opponents are concerned that this opens the door to spreading this material all over the landscape with uncertain results.
However, the reality of this venture is even more complicated.
First, any action by EPA would require a public process before the agency makes a decision.
That decision is subject to legal challenges by organizations that oppose the idea.
This could take years to play out.
Meanwhile, the perfunctory staff analyses accompanying the legislation did not address how much demand there actually is for this material and whether there is enough demand to make even a small dent in the size of the stacks that dot southwest Polk County and a couple of spots in adjacent counties.
Also unaddressed is what would happen if phosphogypsum road testing is ultimately authorized and EPA subsequently decides it is a suitable road-building material and a road project is proposed somewhere in Florida using it.
It is not hard to imagine the political fallout that could occur when word gets out and residents show up at city or county commission meetings to object to using this material near their homes and wells.
You get the idea.
Furthermore, it will be interesting to see, given all of the uncertainty over the EPA review, whether any state-mandated report will be available by its next April Fool’s Day due date and how much it will cost the taxpayers.
Stay tuned.
