BOCC Names New Bridge and Piney Point as Top Legislative Priorities

BRADENTON – At Tuesday’s BOCC meeting, commissioners voted on the issues they would submit to state legislators as their top local priorities, heading into the 2019 legislative session in Tallahassee. The top spot will be occupied by a replacement bridge to carry U.S. 301 over the Manatee River, while the cleanup of Piney Point was elevated to number two.

Piney Point, a 350-acre pond left behind by a bankrupt phosphate mining operation that is filled with poisonous water, has been something of a ticking time bomb for decades. Taxpayers first inherited the responsibility in 2001, when Mulberry Phosphates Corporation went bankrupt, abandoning a fertilizer plant and its three mountainous stacks of radioactive gypsum at a site adjacent to Bishop Harbor.

The site has produced numerous disasters including a sulfuric gas leak that led to illness and dead cattle. In 2003, an intentional discharge of the nitrogen-rich waste into the Gulf of Mexico by the DEP is thought to have spawned a historic red tide bloom, devastating the area's tourism industry.

The DEP sold the site to HRK Holdings in 2006. The company hatched a plan to fill the gypsum stacks with material dredged from Port Manatee while port officials were deepening the waters to allow for larger ships. It was thought that filling the stacks with the port's spoil would be the best way to prevent rainwater from accumulating in them and that the problem would be all but solved.

In 2011, however, a rupture in the liner of one of the stacks led to the discharge of 170 million gallons of poisonous water into Bishop Harbor. HRK filed for bankruptcy, sending the site back to DEP and the taxpayers, who have thus far footed a bill of somewhere around $150-200 million. Most recently, the state–which is ultimately responsible for the Piney Point–wanted to build a deep well injection site beneath it that residents feared could end up contaminating groundwater supplies.

Commissioners are hoping that this year’s epic red tide bloom and the strength of recent hurricanes will have preventative measures on the forefront of legislators’ minds. They're also hoping that having Bradenton’s Bill Galvano in the role of Senate President will help get the issue closer to the front of the line in the always jam-packed 60-day annual legislative session, set to begin March 5.

Commissioner Vanessa Baugh suggested the issue be moved up to the top priority. "We can keep ignoring it, but one of these days something is going to happen, and then we’re going to sit back and feel like idiots because we didn’t take the bull by the horns and tell the state that we need them to do something about this,“ said Baugh.

Other commissioners quickly jumped on board, though Commissioner Betsy Benac cautioned fellow members from making any statement that would infer that the site is a county responsibility, rather than belonging to the state.

Commissioners ultimately voted to place it second behind the much-needed solution for moving traffic over the Manatee River. Downtown Palmetto and Bradenton remain plagued by crippling gridlock as cars try to move north and south over the river’s two inadequate central corridor crossings, the DeSoto Bridge at U.S. 301 and the Green Bridge at Business 41.

Constructed in 1957, the DeSoto bridge is at the end of its life cycle and continued maintenance is becoming cost prohibitive. The board will ask for "the expedited replacement of the DeSoto Bridge and FDOT efforts to identify increased north/south capacity." However, there remains broad disagreement over a proposed elevated through-way that would carry most of the traffic past the two downtowns at elevation, with many pushing instead for a third bridge to be built somewhere in the corridor.