Waste disaster in Florida is a symptom of how we grow our food

Fearing a 20-foot “tidal wave” of contaminated waste being released from a huge industrial waste heap, Florida officials asked hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes in Celebrate County over Easter weekend.

Since then, officials have fired more than 170 million gallons of wastewater to ease the pressure, which could otherwise strain the control walls. The most dangerous water (which contaminants were picked up, as if it had leaked through the breech) was taken away to be processed – but the rest has been deliberately drained to Tampa Bay, where it poses more problems. can cause.

It is a string of potential disasters that can be traced back. Mining Heritage of the Region Phosphate rock, which the agricultural industry relies on for fertilizer. The crisis has surfaced at the former Pine Point phosphate plant, where phosphate was mined and then turned into fertilizer for decades until the site was abandoned in 2001. What is left in view of this is the three phosphogipesum “stack – flat-topped hills. Radioactive industrial waste With waste ponds in the center.

This is not the first time Phosphogipesum Stacks has suddenly released water and garbage slices – and it probably won’t be the last. Some other environmental advocates say that until we increase our food, another crisis could easily occur again at Pinty Point.

Rachel Karran, an environmental lawyer in Florida, says, “The loss comes only from the fertilizer that is produced – not from using it, but only from the production of manure.”

Big mess

Florida Supply A Quarter of the world’s phosphate And 80 percent of all phosphates used in the US. Most of this goes into fertilizer.

But before it can be used to help crops grow, phosphate undergoes a chemical process that leaves behind a large gunk. Once the phosphate ore is dug, sulfuric acid dissolves it in a “solution”. The material used in fertilizer is separated from the slurry, leaving phosphogrypsum behind as a by-product. For each ton of phosphoric acid desirable for fertilizer, more than Five tons of phosphogipsum waste remains.

Phosphogipsum has been used as a building material in other countries such as China, which produces Most phosphate In the world (America ranks third). But in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of the material in construction in 1989 due to its radioactivity, although it was at a relatively low level. (Phosphate ores contain some uranium, thorium, and radium.)

Last year E.P.A. Gave greenery Using phosphogipsum with low levels of radioactivity to build roads (this following the landslide of environmental rollbacks under the Trump administration). But Curran still worries – instead of keeping the risk in one place, she worries, that she is spreading it around.

As it is not commonly used for anything, the phosphate industry pumps its remaining “slurry” into phosphogypsum stacks. The pools of water are at the top while the concrete settles and they are used to form walls. These “piles” develop in the mountains over time – some nearly as tall as a 20-story building and as wide as 600 football fields. There are more than two dozen phosphogipsum stacks throughout Florida.

These giants are weak. Much of Florida is built on porous rock, making it susceptible to sinkholes. in 2016, Opened under a 120-foot-long phosphogipsum stack, sending contaminated water and waste into a major beverage drinking aquifer. Another sinkhole did something similar to another stack 1994. And in 1997Another piling wall collapsed and sent more than 50 million gallons of contaminated water into the Alfia River. Piney Point spilled 170 million gallons of wastewater when its lining burst. 2011

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Fortunately, there is little risk that waste from Pine Point will reach the aquifer and this time will affect drinking water, officials say – although they have provided bottled water to affected residents.

According to University of South Florida professor of geoscience, Matt Pasek, the slight radioactivity of the waste material in the phosphogypsum stack is unlikely to cause major problems for wildlife or people. Pasek says, “This will not make you splatter.” “But it’s not something you want to swim or drink.”

Still, there are other problems at Piney Point. The piles are the highest point in the area, which is one reason that a waterfall of wastewater from the site this week threatened to wipe out the houses. Officials decided that the potential “tidal wave” posed a greater threat than the evacuation of water in Tampa Bay. But environmentalists and fishing industry people are concerned that nitrogen and phosphorus-stained wastewater may trigger bloom of harmful algae that use too much oxygen in the water, affecting local marine life.

Florida lawmakers have as proposed Spending $ 200 million on “complete cleanup and closure” of Pine Point. The state Senate will consider the budget amendment today. “When all this is said and done, those piles will be emptied and sealed. So I’m thrilled about that, Said during a briefing Tomorrow at Penty Point. Once the county commissioners treated it, it authorized the use of a deep injection to store the remaining wastewater from Pine Point.

Curran is still concerned that those actions will not prevent the collapse or leakage of another phosphogipsum stack in the state. As a result of heavy rains and more intense storms Climate change is putting even weaker attacks in an even more precarious situation The situation, she says. A 2004 hurricane caused another breach on another stack, which dumped 65 million gallons of waste into Tampa Bay.

“There is no safe way to manage these stacks, it has been made clear, so the solution is to actually stop the waste from being generated in the first place,” says Karran. “Ultimately it means that we need to change the way we grow food.”

A new scenario?

Changing our agricultural system is a long order. Phosphate is, after all, a building block for life. It forms “backbone“DNA Strand. Phosphorus along with potassium and nitrogen are the three primary nutrients plants need to grow.

Gym stem Bloomberg Via Getty Image

After the second world war Demand for these nutrients increased in agriculture and industry, fertilizers ravaged most of Europe and Asia (there were also Nitrate factories Readily available which was previously used to create munitions). Fertilizers increased crop yields as the Earth’s population grew, and they became an integral part of industrial agriculture.

“Phosphate is not a type of boasting mining industry, something you want for jewelry or things like that,” Pasek says. Because of its important role in agriculture, Pasek says that an end to phosphate mining is “not possible, let’s implement it that way.”

Some farmers, however, are putting it to the test. They are doing something different by returning to some methods of farming before making compost industrially. There is a growing movement towards so-called “regenerative” farming. Instead of planting fertilizers and clay soils – by breaking it down – among cash crops, they are planting other crops that replenish the nutrients in the soil. Radish, For example, has been shown to increase phosphorus in soil.

“There are a lot of farmers out there who have completely done away with synthetic fertilizer, and are doing fine,” says Rick Hayne, soil scientist with the USDA.

Even if it is too soon to completely throw away synthetic fertilizers, there are very few opportunities to use it. some Researchers Phosphates are trying to tap into the legacy of fertilizers that are already trapped in the soil. Sometimes phosphorus combines with other minerals in the soil to form compounds that modern crops have a hard time soaking. Farmers traditionally solved this dilemma by replacing more phosphate fertilizer. As an alternative, crops can be bred to become better at using those trapped nutrients.

And while phosphorus can be a building block for life, the phosphate rock used to make synthetic fertilizers is a finite resource that One day may be over. This is adding to the growing momentum for regenerative farming.

“It is going to be a very different farming system in 20 years. I think we have to move in that direction because it just makes more sense, ”says Hanney. “Why would you work against nature when you can work with it?”

But when it comes to fertilizer it is still slow to change the mindset of the people. “It’s like trying to twist the Titanic with a tugboat,” Hanney says.

Meanwhile, residents evacuating the hill from Pine Point will face risks posed by industrial fertilizers. Hill piles of waste from phosphate mining will continue to grow because no one really knows what to do except to put it in piles or bury it.

The evacuees were allowed to return to their homes last night. The risk of an imminent catastrophic phosphogipsum stack collapse has passed, at least for now. With the landscape dominating, the stacks still remain in the distance.