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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/03/florida-emergency-piney-point-phosphate-plant-pond-leak-radioactive-flood-ron-desantis New Godzilla origin story reboot The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, declared a state of emergency on Saturday after a significant leak at a large pond at the old Piney Point phosphate mine threatened to burst a system that stores water polluted with radioactive materials. Officials evacuated homes and closed off a highway near the large reservoir in the Tampa Bay area, north of Bradenton. Residents a mile north and a half-mile south of the pond received an alert via text saying to leave the area immediately because collapse was “imminent”. The state department of environmental protection said a break was detected on Friday in one wall of a 77-acre pond that has a depth of 25ft and holds millions of gallons of water containing phosphorus and nitrogen from the old phosphate plant. Officials brought in rocks and materials to plug the hole but were unsuccessful. Manatee county administrator Scott Hopes said at a press conference on Saturday the most pressing concern was that the water could flood the area, though population density there was low. “We are talking about the potential of about 600m gallons within a matter of seconds and minutes leaving that retention pool and going around the surrounding area,” he said. Workers were pumping out thousands of gallons per minute to bring the volume down. Pumping the entire pond would take 10 to 12 days. Others were working to chart a path for controlling how the water can flow from the pond into the Tampa Bay. DeSantis’ declaration of a state of emergency allocated more resources for response and recovery. The pond owner, HRK Holdings, did not respond to a request for comment. The pond at the old Piney Point phosphate mine sits in a stack of phosphogypsum, a waste product from manufacturing fertilizer that is radioactive. It contains small amounts of naturally occurring radium and uranium. The stacks can also release large concentrations of radon gas. Hopes said that if the pond collapsed, it could destabilize other areas in the plant. “The pond is basically salt water,” he said. “We saw ducks yesterday, there are snooks [fish] swimming in there. It’s sustaining wildlife. That’s not the case for the other two pools.” The wastewater in the other ponds would need to be treated to reduce ammonium content and other materials, Hopes said. The Florida agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried, urged DeSantis to convene an emergency session of the state cabinet, adding that the Piney Point property has seen similar leaks in the past. “The immediate evacuation of residents, disruption of families during Easter weekend and potential environmental catastrophe requires the attention and action of Florida’s statewide elected leadership,” Fried said. George Kruse, a Manatee county commissioner, said he was at the plant on Saturday with other officials and had to clear the area quickly. “We determined that it was no longer safe to be anywhere near Piney Point, so we all kind of raced off the stacks as fast as we could,” Kruse said in a Facebook video. In 2016, more than 200m gallons of contaminated waste water from another fertilizer plant in central Florida leaked into one of the state’s main aquifers after a massive sinkhole opened up in a pond of a phosphogypsum stack. There are at least 70 gypsum stacks in the US and about 27 in Florida, mostly in the west-central part of the state. Wastewater stored in the gypsum stacks cannot be seen from the ground as the piles surrounding the structure can go as high as 500ft. deadeyez fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 03:45
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Florida (dont drink the water)
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Apr 4, 2021 03:49
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I think my favorite part of the story is where they think just putting rocks on it will stop it. I'm not a beaver so I don't know much about radioactive dams but doesn't water flow between rocks?
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Apr 4, 2021 03:49
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lol why the gently caress is there a radioactive byproduct of fertilizer production?
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Apr 4, 2021 03:50
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deadeyez posted:I think my favorite part of the story is where they think just putting rocks on it will stop it. I'm not a beaver so I don't know much about radioactive dams but doesn't water flow between rocks? I see what they're doing they're filtering the radioactivity out of the water
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Apr 4, 2021 03:52
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deadeyez posted:I think my favorite part of the story is where they think just putting rocks on it will stop it. I'm not a beaver so I don't know much about radioactive dams but doesn't water flow between rocks? They also brought in materials! I mean, they don't specify what kind of materials so maybe it was Eggo Waffles or Flex-Seal, but they had a second plan if the rocks didn't work.
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Apr 4, 2021 03:55
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this is significantly less fun than big boat stuck
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Apr 4, 2021 04:34
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deadeyez posted:I think my favorite part of the story is where they think just putting rocks on it will stop it. I'm not a beaver so I don't know much about radioactive dams but doesn't water flow between rocks? Not if the rock is the right size to plug the hole. 
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Apr 4, 2021 05:08
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Locals were interviewed as making statements like "I don't believe in radioactives" and "the government tells us that it's for our health but I don't buy that one second" along with many citizens repeating "I'm gonna go up and drink that water to prove this is a hoax".
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Apr 4, 2021 05:09
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Can't wait to buy cheap radioactive land I can live on safely on 75 years
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Apr 4, 2021 05:13
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Good. gently caress Florida.
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Apr 4, 2021 05:13
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deadeyez posted:The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, declared a state of emergency on Saturday after a significant leak at a large pond at the old Piney Point phosphate mine threatened to burst a system that stores water polluted with radioactive materials. Oh no! We can't pollute Florida with radioactive water! quote:Others were working to chart a path for controlling how the water can flow from the pond into the Tampa Bay. Oh phew, crisis averted.
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Apr 4, 2021 05:17
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Radioactive pond doing the job Bugs Bunny promised but never delivered, exploding and severing the land connection between Florida and the mainland, sending it floating off into the ocean.
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Apr 4, 2021 05:19
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In Florida we believe in our residents having freedom of choice (to live in a cancer cluster caused by a radioactive gypsum pond or a cancer cluster caused by the local military base dumping firefighting chemicals into the aquifers for 50 years)
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Apr 4, 2021 05:29
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Everyone I know who is from Florida has bad teeth
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Apr 4, 2021 05:38
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There's a whole bunch of these toxic bombs sitting around in the US that are going to go off and render huge swaths of land uninhabitable in the next few decades.
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Apr 4, 2021 05:55
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Augustus Woop-Woop posted:lol why the gently caress is there a radioactive byproduct of fertilizer production? Radioactive isotopes are naturally occurring throughout the Earth's crust so there are a whole bunch of industrial processes that wind up creating dangerous quantities of radioactive byproducts just due to the sheer quantity of ore being extracted and processed In this case phosphate rock is mined and becomes a component in fertilizer, but along with that rock comes some naturally-occurring radioactive uranium, radium, etc. What we really want is just the phosophorous, so that gets extracted and you wind up concentrating a bunch of that natural radioactive poo poo into densities that are somewhat dangerous. It would take money to do something safe with those byproducts so instead we just dump that poo poo in a big hole and hope it doesn't contaminate anyone's drinking water (this happens constantly lol)
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Apr 4, 2021 05:57
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Like this is why america has so many chuds, we've literally brain damaged massive numbers of people with toxic industrial byproducts so that some billionaires can have slightly higher numbers on a spreadsheet.
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Apr 4, 2021 06:01
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lol i googled what a " gypsum stack" is and it's somehow worse than I thought. its not only a giant pile of toxic byproduct rock, but then you put at lake at the top of it.
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Apr 4, 2021 06:07
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radioactice waste for president 
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Apr 4, 2021 06:12
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people are hugely anti-nuclear but only if they think there's a reactor that might generate useful electricity, this stuff is fine
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Apr 4, 2021 06:15
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Captain Beans posted:lol i googled what a " gypsum stack" is and it's somehow worse than I thought. its not only a giant pile of toxic byproduct rock, but then you put at lake at the top of it. The lake keeps dust from being blown everywhere.
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Apr 4, 2021 06:28
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Still not the worst part of Tampa
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