Court Appoints Receiver to Oversee Piney Point Shutdown
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Staff Report
BRADENTON – In an emergency court order issued this week, Judge Edward Nicholas approved the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s request to remove the oversite of Piney Point from its owner, HRK Holdings, appointing an attorney as receiver.
Herbert Donica, a Tampa-based attorney who specializes in bankruptcy law, was appointed as receiver by Nicholas. Donica had previously been involved when a previous site owner declared bankruptcy.
Filings by FDEP and Fortress 2020 Landco LLC (a Piney Point lien holder) claimed that just average rainfall through the end of September would dump more than 60 million gallons of water in the stack that breached at the end of March, sending nearly 500 million gallons of wastewater from the Piney Point phosphogypsum stack into Tampa Bay.
In late June, a consortium of conservation groups filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis, the acting secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, HRK Holdings, and the Manatee County Port Authority over the release of the hazardous pollutants.
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