Piney Point wastewater leak: A history of the former phosphate plant site
By FOX 13 News Staff
Published
Push for a permanent solution at Piney Point
Residents and business owners who have been evacuated several times over the years due to a potential uncontrolled breach at Piney Point want a permanent solution, which may already be in the works.
PALMETTO, Fla. - As crews rush to stabilize the Piney Point wastewater leak in Manatee County, many residents who are new to Florida may be hearing about this environmental dilemma for the first time. But it’s not a new issue and the current crisis is years in the making.
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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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.
A local state of emergency was declared after a break was detected in a wastewater reservoir at the Piney Point fertilizer processing plant in Manatee County.