Editorial: Water: The Hidden Tax on Phosphate Mining

The recent Piney Point incident drew much-needed attention to the long-term consequences of mining phosphate in Florida. However, in addition to the vast environmental concerns of the sites themselves and the surrounding waterways, there is another very obvious and expensive consideration that must be examined in deciding whether it is a viable industry, and that is the intensive use of one of our most precious resources – ground water.

Ground water is the most cost-effective and available manner of securing potable drinking water. The increasing dryland desertification of the Earth's surface that causes less rainfall to return to ground water has already interrupted the water cycle and contributed to higher volumes of coastal runoff – freshwater which is lost to salinization as it enters the sea (intensifying rising sea levels.) What's more difficult, is that we don't have any way of knowing exactly how much ground water we have left, though scientists estimate that we pump it out at about 15 times the rate it is recharged.

For this reason alone, pumping voluminous amounts for processes like phosphate mining and the hydrofracking of natural gas and shale is questionable, if not absurd. However, the massive use of this freshwater source also has an impact on water prices. In 2008, Tampa Bay Water (TBW) used an average of 170 million gallons per day (MGD) according to the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD). The water TBW retrieved came from three different sources: the aquifer (35%), reservoir and river (58%) and the Apollo Beach Desalinization Water Plant (7%).

Ground water, the least expensive, is obtained at a cost of about $1.00 per 1,000 gallons. Surface water requires additional treatment and is obtained at a cost of about $2.00 per 1,000 gallons. Reverse osmosis water (RO) from the desal plant requires many filters, extensive electricity (and the resulting carbon footprint) and produces water at a cost of about $3.00 per 1,000 gallons. The cost of each source varies based on other conditions and does not include delivery costs. TBW charges its customers a flat $2.50 per 1,000 gallons, which covers delivery and services (e.g., buildings, pumps, pipes, people, vehicles, equipment) plus a regulated profit fixed as a percentage.

The following table shows TBW's cost for each component of the 170 MGD of municipal water and the additional costs added by TBW:

• The 35% obtained as ground water costs $59,500 a day

• The 58% obtained as surface water costs $197,200 a day

• The 7%  obtained as desalinated water costs $35,700 a day

• Daily cost of obtaining water for TBW: $292,400 a day

• Total charge for that water to the public: $425,000 a day* (*average daily amount TBW charges for supplying water to its 2.5 million customers)

The more water that is pumped out of the ground by phosphate companies who drill their own wells and pay only a permit fee and the cost of operating the pumps, the more stress that is placed on the aquifer and the more water that has to be obtained from the other two significantly more expensive sources to meet residential water demands. It does not seem fair that TBW customers should have to pay a significantly higher price for water because the intensive water use of one industry puts such a strain on the total water supply.

If 100 percent of TBW’s daily water supply was from ground water, as it was in the past, and its daily expense for retrieving that water was only $1.00 per thousand gallons as it is now, it would cost TBW only $170,000 to retrieve the 170 MGD, and its customers would be saving $122,000 each day. That's $3,672,000 per month, or $44,530,000 per year.

Phosphate mining is the second largest water consumer in the region, second only to TBW. Both SWFWMD and TBW prosper from the large amount of water used for phosphate mining. When profits are fixed to a percentage of revenue, inflating the cost of the services translates to more profits while complying with the same regulations. This ploy is common among utilities. Phosphate's heavy use of water threatens and lowers water reserves. This, in turn, helps utilities sell the more expensive water sources to TBW customers.

In 2002, the first year TBW took over operations from the West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority, TBW was using 260 MGD. All of this water was ground water pumped from the aquifer. At the same time, more than 150 MGD of ground water was also being pumped from the aquifer for phosphate mining operations, based on SWFWMD permits.

At that time, vast areas of wetlands and other shallow waters were recharging the aquifer at artificially increased rates due to this excessive groundwater pumping, explains Dr. Sydney Bacchus, Hydroecologist and Florida wetland expert. Dr. Bacchus further explained that this abnormal recharge, known as ”induced recharge“ exceeds the water available as natural recharge, particularly during the dry season and during droughts. The induced recharge, mine pits and settling ponds interrupt natural surface and ground water flow and result in the ultimate destruction of surrounding wetlands. That, in turn, causes degradation of the aquifer and eliminates inexpensive ground water as a continuing source of potable water.

In 2008, when TBW and SWFWMD customers were spending hundreds of millions of dollars building and repairing, re-repairing and re-building, the C. W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir and doling out several hundred million dollars to the Apollo Beach Desalinization Plant, they were told water supplies were in peril. SWFWMD offered TBW $85 million in tax revenue to build the desalinization plant in order to reduce ground water pumping from the aquifer.

That same year, SWFWMD's records show Mosaic phosphate mining operation, only one of several phosphate mining companies in the area, was using 17.77 BILLION gallons of ground water annually. That amount is 2.2 billion gallons more than the entire volume of the C. W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir. Mosaic’s permit from SWFWMD allowed that phosphate mining company to use twice the nearly 20 billion gallons of ground water Mosaic was pumping at that time (not including many ”shallow“ wells that go un-metered).
 
When paired with large corporations, utilities can generate enormous amounts of capital. The utilities then pass these incurred operational costs of the corporation to its customers as a form of under-the-radar corporate welfare as shown in the water-cost table above. These additional costs can exceed tens of millions and even billions of dollars.

The utilities can use these tactics to advance their agendas of regulated profits, promotions and salaries. Meanwhile, the corporations get to externalize operational costs to the public who must shoulder the burden without any knowledge of what is occurring. TBW has begun a promotional campaign asking what ideas the public has that can help to curtail the cost of their out of control water bills. A more equitable division of water costs might be a start.

Saving $3.67 million a month for the last seven years would equate to $308.44 million siphoned from TBW customers. These costs would have been avoided if phosphate companies had been forced to stand second in line to the public in accessing ground water and then forced to use the alternative water sources for amounts above and beyond capacity. Instead, the cost of the 17.77 billion gallons Mosaic used in 2008 and subsequent years amounts to a fraction of what TBW pays to retrieve the same amount of water, and equates to a large amount of lost savings for the public.

For perspective, that amount could have built the $244 million Skyway Bridge and left more than $64 million in change. Last month, the US Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) released its Scoping Report for the Area-wide Environmental Impact Statement (AEIS) required by federal law to evaluate the cumulative impacts of phosphate mining before any of the mining companies can expand phosphate mining, which was supposed to include all past, present and future impacts of phosphate mining in the central Florida area – including economic impacts – regardless of where those impacts are occurring.

In the more than 2,000 pages of the report, we could not find any mention of the economic burden the public is bearing because of the clandestine water subsidies for phosphate mining from SWFWMD and TBW. The Bradenton Times contacted ACOE's Regulatory Project Manager, John Fellows, who is overseeing the AEIS Scoping Report. Mr. Fellows confirmed that it wasn't included and said that such analysis would have been part of the scoping process which he said is over. ”It isn't in there, because no one put it in there,“ said Fellows, who explained that the scoping process relies on what is submitted. Both the ACOE and TBW say they want to know what you think. Don't miss this opportunity to tell them.