latest news: Phosphate Industry
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Phosphate Industry Hits Another Low
Strike the Alafia River off your list of fishing spots. It’s gone, dead as a sewer pipe, killed by the carelessness of yet another phosphate company. The enormity of the acid spill last week is only now becoming clear as biologists continue to study the river. “I think it pretty well killed everything,” said Marty […]
Phosphate Industry -
Gypsum finds ecological concerns stacked against it
Anybody who’s lived in the Bay Area for any amount of time need not look at the numbers provided by the Florida Phosphate Council to understand how important the industry is to Central Florida. Last year alone, according to the Florida Phosphate Council, 33.8 million metric tons of phosphate rock were extracted from 6,355 acres […]
Phosphate Industry -
Phosphate industry lobbys to end ban on sale of gypsum by-product
MULBERRY – They tower over the Central Florida landscape, looking like flat-topped mesas imported from the desert Southwest. And every year, the giant piles, or stacks, of phosphogypsum get a little bigger – 30 million tons bigger. That’s not good news to some people, who say the byproducts of phosphate mining pollute the air and […]
Phosphate Industry -
Phosphate mining legacy feared
The Florida phosphate industry figured prominently in the national media last week. And was, I am sure, not at all pleased to be the subject of so much attention – none of it favorable. U.S. News & World Report had a major article headed “Sinkholes and stacks,” illustrated with a dismal and dramatic photo of […]
United States, Florida Phosphate Industry -
Sinkholes and Stacks; Neighbors claim Florida’s Phosphate Mines are a Hazard
Betty Stancil remembers the day in 1986 when a giant dragline began ripping up the ground across the street, just 60 feet from her front door. Eight stories tall, blocking out the sun and swinging a bucket as big as her three-bedroom bungalow, the machine gouged up to 150 tons of earth with each pass. […]
United States, Florida Phosphate Industry -
Fluorosilicic Acid Spill on Florida Highway
DELTONA – Jeff Carine was driving to Daytona Beach to play golf Tuesday morning when his Toyota Camry hit a mushy, snowlike liquid covering Interstate 4. Carine, a golfer from Windermere, assumed it was a minor chemical spill and kept driving. Six hours later, he returned to the spot after hearing news throughout the day […]
United States, Florida Phosphate Industry -
Regional Planners OK Fort Meade Phosphate Gypsum Stack
BARTOW – Regional planners heard more than three hours of testimony Monday before they unanimously approved construction of a new phosphate gypsum stack near Fort Meade. The crowd of more than 200 people was split between stack opponents, who fear water and radiation pollution from the stack, and supporters many of whom rely on the […]
Phosphate Industry -
Old plant may contaminate Anclote River, report says
TARPON SPRINGS – Two diverse neighbors share a small, peaceful cove along the Anclote River: a subdivision with a handful of homes and a defunct chemical plant with buried hazardous waste. A recently released report shows some contaminants from the 160-acre Stauffer Chemical Plant, closed for 13 years, may have seeped into Meyers Cove, shared […]
United States, Florida Phosphate Industry -
Polk firm engineers new technology to capture HF
LAKELAND – Gases escaping from fertilizer company cooling ponds have been blamed for injuring orange trees and making cows teeth fall out after they eat tainted grass. But a Polk County company has invented a new way to recover a valuable commodity from the ponds, which DuPont says it is ready to buy. What’s more, […]
United States, Florida Phosphate Industry -
Waste bypasses federal regulation despite radioactivity
TAMPA – Fertilizer companies scour and blast crusty, radioactive deposits from filtering equipment, then pile the waste on gypsum stacks. Contaminated with radium, it is among the most concentrated radioactive waste that comes from natural materials. Yet the federal government has no rules for its disposal. That’s because the government considers it “naturally occurring radioactive […]
Phosphate Industry