Lawsuit Launched Over EPA’s Failure on Phosphate Mining Waste Oversight

BRADENTON — On Tuesday, conservation, public health, and environmental justice organizations notified the Environmental Protection Agency of their intent to sue the agency for failing to respond to a rulemaking petition requesting stronger oversight and regulation of toxic and radioactive waste from phosphate mining and fertilizer production.

The groups filing the legal challenge include People for Protecting Peace River, Portneuf Resource Council, Rise St. James, Sierra Club, Waterkeeper Alliance, Waterkeepers Florida, Bayou City Waterkeeper, Our Santa Fe River, Healthy Gulf, ManaSota-88 and the Center for Biological Diversity. They are represented by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment at Stetson University College of Law. The notice comes three years after the groups petitioned the agency to strengthen protections for people’s health and the environment.

“It’s time for the EPA to take aggressive steps to stop the ongoing environmental injustices and destruction caused by the phosphate industry’s waste,” said Ragan Whitlock, a Florida-based attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s been nearly three years since the state dumped 215 million gallons of toxic, radioactive waste from the Piney Point facility into Tampa Bay, but the EPA has done absolutely nothing to prevent the next phosphate pollution disaster.”

In February 2021, 17 organizations petitioned the EPA to better regulate phosphogypsum and process wastewater under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The two radioactive, toxic wastes are created during fertilizer production, transforming destructively mined phosphate rock into phosphoric acid.

The groups’ petition asked the EPA to revisit its 1991 decision exempting phosphoric acid production wastes from federal hazardous waste regulations so the agency can properly oversee the safe treatment, storage, and disposal of phosphogypsum and process wastewater.

“Once again, we’re relying on the EPA to establish stringent regulations and demand improved technologies for waste management,” said Sharon Lavigne, founder and director of RISE St. James. “Here in Cancer Alley, we’ve experienced firsthand the challenges of residing near Mosaic. Phosphate mining waste has the potential to completely degrade the natural environment — the land, the air, the water, and the soil. The radiation hazards aren’t just a concern for the workers; they also affect neighboring communities. We deserve so much better.”

The wastes are currently exempt from hazardous waste regulations to protect the phosphate industry from the cost of compliance. Yet Florida’s largest phosphate manufacturer, the Mosaic Co., reported a net income of $3.6 billion in 2022 alone.

“The phosphate mining industry is an industry of cradle-to-grave pollution,” said Glenn Compton, chairman of Manasota-88. “The cradle is phosphate mining and the grave is the radioactive phosphogypsum waste dumped into gypstacks. The abandoned Piney Point gypstacks clearly demonstrate that not enough is being done to safeguard the public or the environment from the devastating impacts that the phosphate industry is having on Florida.”

The groups maintain that "weak, primarily state oversight of these wastes has produced environmental disasters nationwide." The 2021 Piney Point discharge into Tampa Bay fueled a deadly red tide that killed more than 1,600 tons of marine life, including tens of thousands of fish.

They point out that Mosaic’s New Wales plant in Mulberry, Florida, has experienced at least four major sinkholes, including one in 2016 that dumped more than 200 million gallons of process wastewater and an unknown amount of radioactive phosphogypsum into the Floridan aquifer. That toxic plume remains, and the ultimate fate and transport of the waste is unknown, according to an independent study.

Radium-226, found in phosphogypsum, has a 1,600-year radioactive decay half-life. In addition to high concentrations of radioactive materials, phosphogypsum and process wastewater can also contain carcinogens and heavy toxic metals like antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, fluoride, lead, mercury, nickel, silver, sulfur, thallium, and zinc.

Click here to learn more about phosphogypsum and efforts to protect public health and the environment from its harm.