Florida Orders Evacuations As Toxic Wastewater Spills Into City

Toxic and potentially radioactive wastewater from storage ponds in Manatee County, Florida have begun leaking, and an evacuation order has been issued as there is now an "imminent threat" of collapse of the containment area. This toxic water is being pumped into the fragile ecosystem of the Tampa Bay, but what officials are unable to pump out is expected to inundate hundreds of homes in the immediate future. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Uh, recently it was discovered actually on March 26, it was discovered that a waste water containment area down in, uh, central, Southern Florida ish, uh, began leaking and has the potential to flood hundreds of homes with toxic radioactive waste water. So here's, what's happening with this story. You have a place in Florida, a little South of Tampa called Piney point. And at Piney point, there's an old phosphorus mine, and they would use the wastewater that came from mining phosphorous. They stored it in a, this dozens of acres, a area that is filled with these retention ponds, where they put the water. This water is contaminated with chemicals, ammonia, uh, nitrogen. It's very acidic, but overall not the worst kind of wastewater out there. The problem is the phospho gypsum. Now the phospho gypsum is what these ponds are made out of. And phosphor Gypson contains traces of uranium and is therefore radioactive.

So as these ponds fail, as the phospho gypsum breaks down, it gets into the water turning the water radioactive. And now governor Ron DeSantis down here in Florida has had to declare a state of emergency. They do believe there is quote, an imminent threat to several hundred households that would be in the path of a, I guess, tidal wave ish thing of, of toxic wastewater. Um, and, and right now what they're doing is they're pumping the water out of the wastewater, uh, or excuse me, containment, uh, ponds. And they're pumping it into Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay is an ecosystem that already was, was on a lifeline. And they're taking this toxic waste water and pumping it in there, but don't worry because Florida's environmental protection agency run by Republicans is telling us that, Oh, if there's nothing wrong with that water at all. No, no, no, no, no.

The water meets water quality standards for Marine waters, uh, with the exception of pH total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen. So yeah, other than where it doesn't meet the standards, it totally meets the standards. I that's literally what I just read to you is the statement that the Florida environmental protection agency released. They said, guys, it meets our standards except for our standards on acidity and nitrogen, which is a huge, huge contributor to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, which Tampa Bay is fed from. So yes, we have a very large environmental happening down here in Florida and it's happening in slow motion. They did have work crews out there Friday and Saturday trying to, uh, repair the containment ponds in an old, ultimately they failed. They're not able to contain it. They were not able to fix it. And we're just sitting here waiting for a tidal wave of toxic radioactive wastewater to hit more than 300 homes in Piney point. That's the situation right now in Florida. And here's the kicker folks. This was totally predictable because this phosphorous mine down there in Piney point actually shut down 20 years ago. And in that time, this is now the third a wastewater breach that they have had. So they have known this as a problem. They have known this as something that happens, you know, with relative frequency three times in 20 years. So you're probably looking at one once every seven issue years. And, uh, they didn't do anything about it.