Leadership on Phosphate Mining Must be Proactive

Manatee County Commissioners have unanimously expressed grave concern over the status of the former phosphate mining site at Piney Point. However, it seems counter-intuitive that a body would express such anxiety regarding the predictable byproducts of an industry, while simultaneously supporting its growth in our community.

Two years ago, nearly to the day, Manatee County citizens bombarded commissioners with heartfelt pleas and well-constructed, logical arguments as to why they should not approve a new master mining plan and rezone that would see the Mosaic Company expand its Manatee County phosphate operations, significantly increasing mining intensity and all of the risk and toxic byproducts that come with it.

This vote took place mere months after a sinkhole, 45 feet in diameter and caused by one of the company’s Polk County mines, forced well over 200 million gallons of contaminated water into a major Florida aquifer. The public hearing stretched out for two days because so many Manatee County residents wanted their voices to be heard and for commissioners to know that they opposed any expansion of phosphate operations.

One after another, regular citizens, scientists, environmentalists, engineers and economists made the case that such an approval was bad news for Manatee County and would not only put today’s citizens at risk but unfairly saddle future generations with a litany of public health and environmental consequences caused by such sites, along with the financial responsibilities of dealing with them. On more than one occasion, opponents made reference to Piney Point as a harbinger of future dangers.

Nevertheless, commissioners, several of whom had taken campaign contributions from the company and its officers, voted 5-2 to approve the application. Only commissioners Robin DiSabatino and Charles Smith voted against the expansion, neither of whom remain on the board. All five commissioners who voted in favor remain seated– Carol Whitmore, Betsy Benac, Vanessa Baugh, Stephen Jonsson, and Priscilla Trace–while commissioners Misty Servia and Reggie Bellamy had not yet been elected.

It’s important to note that Piney Point’s current ecological time bomb is the result of mining operations that began more than half a century ago and have long since been shuttered. This is the reality of mining phosphate, an enterprise that produces a host of nasty byproducts for which there is no sustainable business model allowing for safe and adequate disposal and reclamation. Even if there were, buying the political influence needed to instead mine in the most profitable manner possible has already proven to be far more cost effective.

As we learned during a recent update from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, there is still no plan in place as to how they and the LLC they allowed to take ownership of the site plan to get rid of some 630 million gallons of poisonous water that currently resides in ponds at Piney Point, ever threatening to again pollute our local waters. They are only starting to come together on a plan to cap the giant, toxic phosphogypsum stacks next to the ponds so that they do not continue to contribute toxic rain runoff to water bodies that are growing in volume each year.

The expansion of Mosaic’s Wingate mine– just the expansion–was more than six times larger than the entirety of Piney Point’s mine at its peak! And keep in mind that Manatee County represents a relatively small piece of Mosaic’s Florida portfolio. Mosaic spends millions of dollars on advertising campaigns, naming rights, political contributions and lobbying in order to craft a green image, create civic goodwill and exert political influence in the communities its operations ravage. But any critical examination of the industry and its practices reveals a reality worthy of the cynicism shown by Manatee County’s citizen opposition.

In addition to the pollutants, phosphate mining is also extremely water-intensive, but not very job-intensive, meaning it creates relatively few jobs (around 4 per-acre mined) while sucking up billions of gallons of groundwater per site, for which the companies are charged the paltry sum of a few hundred dollars per permit, rather than a per-gallon price that adequately reflects the cost of the precious resource they are squandering. When considering the dark picture already painted by groundwater modeling of our state’s aquifers, such practices are highly irresponsible to say the very least.

As climate change continues to extend hurricane season and strengthen the intensity of storms, the more than two dozen phosphogypsum stacks like the ones at Piney Point that are littered throughout Florida’s bone valley are an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Last July, commissioners in DeSoto County went off-script and stood up to Big Phosphate, despite a planning staff that had proven itself just as compliant as Manatee County's in rubber stamping the industry’s proposals.

If commissioners in Manatee really want to demonstrate their concern regarding the phosphate-related risks faced by their citizens, they’ll find the courage when it really counts–in the here and now, rather than decades later after the companies have declared bankruptcy and saddled the communities they’ve pillaged with the bill.

Dennis Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University, where he earned a degree in Government. He later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. Dennis's latest novel, Sacred Hearts, is availablehere.