â50,000 bags of fertilizer:â What could Piney Point do to Tampa Bay?
Scientists are trying to forecast what comes next. Environmentalists fear algal blooms and fish kills.
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Updated 1 hour ago
The focus for emergency teams at the old Piney Point phosphate plant property is stopping a flood from surging out of an enormous, leaking reservoir of polluted water.
Success on that front could mean pumping
a majority of the 480 million gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay, posing an ecological danger to the treasured estuary that clean water advocates say may endure for weeks or months.
âThatâs like dumping 50,000 bags of fertilizer into the bay all at once,â said Ed Sherwood, director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, on what a full drain of the pond could mean.