![]() ![]() What made it remarkable is that for the first time I can recall in his administration, he did not blame the media for something going wrong on his watch.ĭeSantis tried to put the best face on things, announcing that the water was not radioactive (because it’s the stack that’s radioactive, not the water). Ron DeSantis flew over the site Sunday morning in a helicopter and then held a rather remarkable press conference. ![]() As of Monday, they had 300 million gallons left to deal with. Meanwhile work crews pumped out the polluted water from the top of the gyp stack out as fast as they could to relieve the pressure on the stack, trying to prevent a collapse. Thus, during this past weekend, Manatee County officials ordered more than 300 families living nearby to evacuate, and the sheriff even emptied out his jail’s first floor of inmates in case a 20-foot wave of nastiness came rolling their way. But, as has been true throughout Piney Point’s history, the people in charge failed to take action in time. The current owner of Piney Point, HRK Holdings (which has been in and out of bankruptcy) notified county officials months ago that it was in trouble again and headed for a calamity. None of this should have been a surprise. Throughout Easter weekend the stack, which is made of radioactive waste left from turning phosphate into fertilizer, threatened to collapse and dump millions of gallons of acidic, nutrient-laden liquid into Tampa Bay. There was a pond full of 480 million gallons of polluted water on top of the stack, and it is now spewing out a steady stream of that stuff into a creek that flows into a nearby aquatic preserve called Bishop Harbor. Right now, we have a massive phosphogypsum stack at the 676-acre Piney Point fertilizer plant site in Manatee County that’s gone all wobbly. Generally speaking, though, what’s happened boils down to this nearly ironclad rule regarding life in Florida: Our state’s leaders have consistently put the convenience of industry ahead of the cleanliness of our waterways.ĭisaster is the price we pay for those messed up priorities, over and over. There’s a highly specific reason for this, summed up in two words: Piney Point. It’s the state’s largest estuary, meaning it’s full of fish and crabs and seagrass and dolphins and manatees, not to mention seabirds of every kind.Īnd right now, they’re all facing a potential disaster. There’s also a real Tampa Bay, a 400-square-mile body of water that separates Tampa, Clearwater, and St. It’s a popular, if if somewhat vague, sports team “location.” The Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Stanley Cup-winning Tampa Bay Lightning play in Tampa, but the World Series also-ran Tampa Bay Rays play in St. Even if you live outside of Florida, you’ve probably heard of Tampa Bay. ![]()
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