Aw shucks, Saturday is National Oyster Day and while a handful of Tampa Bay spots are recognizing it, we rounded up more places with creative preparations of the beloved bivalve. While the rule of thumb used to dictate never eating oysters in months that don’t have an “r” in the name, that is no longer the case. According to Southern Living magazine, you can eat oysters year-round since “the .
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Piney Point reservoir a disaster waiting to happen
By Betsey Piette posted on April 23, 2021
For decades, capitalist industries have produced wastewater by-products without serious plans for how to dispose of them. Their contents are usually toxic, often radioactive and generally hazardous to surrounding communities where they are stored and to the larger environment should they be released accidentally or otherwise.
While there are many thousands of such hazardous sites across the U.S., it is rare that they make the news. Case in point is the reservoir on the former 676-acre Piney Point phosphate mine site near Tampa, Fla. A state of emergency was declared April 3 when the walls of the storage pool, holding water polluted with phosphate and containing radioactive materials radium and uranium, threatened to burst.
A computer model shows that a plume of wastewater from Piney Point has spread as far north as the Little Manatee River and St. Petersburg, and as far south as the Manatee River, as it slowly heads out toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Research teams from the University of South Florida are using a computer model that forecasts the path of nutrient-rich wastewater discharged into Tampa Bay from the former Piney Point fertilizer plant this month as they study how the polluted water is affecting marine ecosystems.
The forecast shows that a plume of the wastewater will shift back and forth along the eastern shores of middle and lower Tampa Bay, from as far north as the Cockroach Bay Aquatic Preserve and the Little Manatee River south to the northern shores of Robinson Preserve and the Manatee River. The forecast shows varying concentrations of the wastewater have entered important habitats such as Bishop Harbor and the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve.
/ Lost Coast Oyster Company has a floating farm at Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve in Manatee County.
Shellfish growers have long-term concerns about the wastewater pumping from the former Piney Point phosphate plant into the waters of Tampa Bay, including the potential for toxic algae and the reputation of the bay’s water quality.
The nutrient-rich water pouring from a leaking Piney Point reservoir into Tampa Bay is projected to end up in areas like Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve, where some shellfish farms live.
Lost Coast Oyster Company has been growing shellfish in lower Tampa Bay for about a year and a half, selling between 17,000 and 18,000 oysters so far.