Search

  • 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. […]

  • Study to Address Cancer, Bone Problems, & Other Health Concerns Near Coronet Phosphate

    PLANT CITY – Carl Crowell isn’t sure what caused his prostate cancer, and he can’t say why many of his neighbors have been stricken with other forms of the disease. Public health agencies don’t know either. But they are trying to determine whether pollution from a phosphate plant and old landfills could be linked to […]

  • Public Health Concerns Trump Other Priorities In Plant City

    A frightening situation in Plant City raises questions about the effectiveness of state pollution laws. Public health officials are investigating whether pollution from the phosphate plant or nearby old landfills are causing health problems in two Plant City neighborhoods, which neighbors say suffer high rates of cancer. The Tribune’s Deborah Alberto found that exceedingly high […]

  • Coronet Development Has Plant City Asking Questions

    PLANT CITY – Commissioners, who less than a month ago were on the verge of approving the city’s largest housing development, will have a chance to ask how they could have come so far yet know so little. City officials said they were reassured by state and county regulatory agencies that it’s safe to build […]

  • Phosphate dangers pile up

    A barge containing treated waste water from the abandoned Piney Point plant near Palmetto is now headed into the Gulf of Mexico as part of a desperate — and risky — attempt to prevent a catastrophic spill into Tampa Bay. As troubling as the situation is, it’s just one example of how badly state and […]

  • Coronet’s Problems Were Kept Quiet For Far Too Long

    Plant City commissioners are understandably furious that environmental regulators never notified them of serious pollution problems at a phosphate processing plant. The commissioners were about to consider approving a huge development near Coronet Industries when the Tribune and WFLA-TV, News Channel 8 revealed the company had dozens of environmental violations and nearby residents complained of […]

  • Companies avoid water cleanup

    Toxic chemicals from the Agrico Chemical Co. Superfund site might have seeped into local drinking water and will remain in the area`s underground aquifer for decades. The two principal companies responsible for the Superfund site are Agrico, the last operator of the plant, and Conoco Inc., current owner of the 35-acre site, located northwest of […]

  • Coronet Cancer Study Disputed

    PLANT CITY – A national expert in environmental medicine and toxicology calls the state health department’s recent investigation into cancer rates near Coronet Industries “meaningless” and “irrelevant.” James Dahlgren, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, has testified on behalf of plaintiffs in a number of lawsuits involving pollution- […]

  • Waste Not, Want Not. One company’s fight against Newfoundlanders & Kanaks.

    FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK–The province of Newfoundland and the archipelago nation of New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific seem to have little in common. New Caledonia, also known as Kanaky after the indigenous Kanaks who inhabit it, is a French colony in the southwest Pacific. Kanaky-New Caledonia separated from Australia some 85 million years ago and […]

  • Fluoride Concerns Surface Once Again

    Despite decades of adding fluoride to drinking water to protect teeth from decay, there are growing concerns about the efficacy and the safety of this practice. Spurred by new research on fluoride’s health effects and at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC) has begun another review of the problems of water fluoridation.