Florida is moving to permanently close the leaky Piney Point wastewater reservoir that poured millions of gallons of water into Tampa Bay while threatening to burst open and flood nearby homes and businesses, the governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Tuesday.
The Republican governor said at a news conference at the site that the chronic challenges of containing polluted water at the long-closed phosphate plant must end.
“We want this to be the last chapter of the Piney Point story,” DeSantis said. The reservoir is located just south of Tampa in Manatee county, near waterways that flow into Tampa Bay.
The governor said he has directed the department of environmental protection (DEP) to develop a closure plan, and that $15.4m in existing agency funds would be used to treat the wastewater to reduce the nutrients that can cause algae blooms and fish kills.
When a leak developed at the site this month, in a reservoir that once held 480m gallons (1.9m liters), experts fearing a collapse triggered the evacuation of more than 300 homes, businesses and farms in the area.
The worst was avoided as engineers rushed in vacuum trucks and other equipment to furiously pump out wastewater, relieving the pressure. Crews also installed a steel plate at the leak site to prevent additional flooding from a seam in the reservoir’s plastic liner.
The reservoir contains what are called phosphogypsum stacks, a leftover from the phosphate mined for fertilizer. Officials say the water contains nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonia and small amounts of radium and uranium, but is not radioactive.
There are about two dozen other similar phosphate wastewater reservoirs in Florida, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. They hold about 1bn tons of phosphogypsum stacks similar to those at Piney Point.
Noah Valenstein, the Florida DEP secretary, said the state also plans to sue HRK Holdings, which bought the Piney Point property in 2006 and promised a cleanup. Instead, the company filed for bankruptcy following a 2011 spill of 170m gallons.
“Stay tuned for litigation,” Valenstein said. “This is it. The site has to be closed.”