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FLUORIDE IDENTIFIED AS RADIOACTIVE
Here are two newspaper articles
that provide admissions that Cargill's wastewater
that is used in fluoridation chemicals (hydrofluosilicic
acid) is radioactive.
Cargill supplies 70% of all of the
fluoridation substances used in the U.S. The hydrofluosilicic
acid is captured from Cargill's phosphate fertilizer
production pollution scrubber systems and held in
"holding ponds" as described in the movie
Erin Brockovich. Cargill has bragged that they are
environmentally sensitive so they reuse the wastewater
to produce more hydrofluosilicic acid.
URL's for more newspaper reports
at the bottom. Original estimate in first story:18
thousand gallons. Revised estimate: 60 million gallons
spilled.
Acidic, radioactive water
spills into bay
A breach in a dike at a phosphate company in Tampa
lets loose 18,000 gallons of wastewater.
JANET ZINK, JONI JAMES and BILL
VARIAN
Published September 6, 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TAMPA - A dike holding millions
of gallons of acidic phosphate water breached Sunday
during hurricane rains, releasing at least 18,000
gallons of wastewater into Hillsborough Bay.
Cargill Crop Nutrition, a phosphate
company with a factory along the bay in Riverview,
tried to protect against environmental damage by mixing
a lime product with the acidic fluid to neutralize
it.
But state officials said they feared
Sunday night that the wildlife in the bay might suffer
because containment efforts had failed.
At some point, the company ran out
of the neutralizing agent, and a pump being used in
the process stopped working, said Russell Schweiss,
a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental
Protection.
State officials did not expect the
release to harm residential areas or threaten public
safety.
"We feel terrible that this
has happened. We're sick about it," said Cargill
vice president Gray Gordon, who was protected from
the driving rain by a long yellow rain coat as he
spent Sunday afternoon monitoring the breach at the
sprawling plant off U.S. 41.
The 6-foot deep break at the top
of a 100-foot-tall gypsum stack occurred when heavy
winds created high waves that bashed the dike's southwest
corner, said DEP secretary Colleen Castille.
Although Cargill representatives
said only 18,000 gallons of wastewater had been released,
DEP officials say the potential remains for as much
as 120 million gallons to escape from the retention
pond through the breach.
In the midst of the severe weather,
communications between Cargill and the DEP apparently
was spotty.
DEP, which was not on site Sunday,
said it believed caustic soda, not lime was being
used to treat the discharge.
The polluted water, Gordon said,
is flowing from an opening at the top of the gypsum
stack down its side and into a stormwater ditch that
runs around its 400-acre base. Cargill decided to
open a valve and release water from the ditch into
Archie Creek, which flows into Hillsborough Bay, after
consulting with the DEP.
Releasing the water, he said, should
prevent a break or overflow of the ditch, a situation
that could have caused an uncontrollable flood of
water.
"Our goal is to limit the amount
of water we're discharging," Gordon said.
The treatment with lime and, perhaps,
steady rainfall, should neutralize the discharge,
Gordon said. Once the weather clears, crews will repair
the break and test the creek and bay water to see
how much damage has been done, he said. The repair
should take less than a day.
The wastewater, left untreated,
would be toxic to fish, wildlife and humans.
"It would give you burns if
you walk through it ... like a sunburn," Castille
said.
Cargill alerted the state at 12:45
p.m. about the leak, immediately after it happened,
Castille said.
Hillsborough County Administrator
Pat Bean said the county's Environmental Protection
Commission also has been notified, along with the
U.S. Coast Guard.
"It's distressing. Gypsum stacks
near the bay just don't work. They're a ticking time
bomb," said Jan Platt, Hillsborough County commissioner
and chairwoman of the Hillsborough County Environmental
Protection Commission.
The wastewater contains gypsum,
or calcium sulfate, with a pH level of 1.8. Low pH
levels indicate high levels of acid. By comparison,
the pH number for orange juice is 2.5; for cola soft
drinks, 2; drinking water, 7 to 8; lime, 12, a DEP
spokesman said.
The fluid is also radioactive, about
two to three times the water quality standard, according
to the DEP.
Adding lime or caustic soda to the
discharge would lower the acidity. It would also reduce
some, but not all, of its radioactivity, Castille
said.
By early Sunday night, the company
had gone through 5,000 pounds of neutralizer and the
DEP had helped locate additional supplies that were
in transit late Sunday, Schweiss said.
Cargill makes fertilizer at the
plant using phosphate mined from the central part
of the state. Gypsum is a radioactive waste product
of the process.
Several ponds dot the Cargill property
in Riverview. That water is constantly recycled and
used to either make fertilizer or pump gypsum to the
top of the stack.
During the rainy season, Cargill
keeps the ponds level by taking excess water to a
huge retention pond at the top of the gypsum stack.
Under normal circumstances, the water evaporates,
Gordon said.
But the abundant rains in recent
months have made it difficult for Cargill to keep
water levels under control.
"We have been like everybody
else. We've had a lot of excessive rain over the last
several months," Gordon said.
More than 2 feet of rain fell at
Cargill in July and August, he said.
To accommodate the water glut, crews
over the past two weeks have been working to reinforce
the dike.
"Mother Nature just beat us,"
Gordon said, noting that the spill could have been
worse.
"I'm glad we got a two-week
start."
----------------------------------------
Cargill Was Told Thin Berm
A Threat
By MIKE SALINERO msalinero@tampatrib.com
Published: Sep 8, 2004
TAMPA - State authorities warned
a fertilizer company a month ago that it was holding
too much acidic wastewater behind a dike that was
too thin atop a 180-foot-high gypsum stack.
Storm-driven waves broke through
the dike Sunday, spilling millions of gallons of polluted
water into a creek that feeds Hillsborough Bay. As
the water release continued more than 24 hours later,
the company raised its estimate from 41 million to
60 million gallons flowing into Archie Creek.
Hillsborough County environmental
scientists said Tuesday that early testing showed
that the spill raised acidity levels in the creek
north of Gibsonton, but so far there was no evidence
of an environmental problem in the bay.
The company, Cargill Crop Nutrition,
worked Tuesday to raise the height of the dike made
of phosphogypsum, an earthen byproduct of phosphate
processing, while engineers considered measures to
release more wastewater.
With Hurricane Ivan potentially
following Frances, the state may order the company
to treat and discharge as much of the water as possible.
A massive discharge is not an ideal
solution. A caustic-soda treatment lowers the water's
acidity but does not remove nutrients such as phosphorus
and nitrogen or heavy metals and harmful chemicals
such as fluoride.
Florida's Department of Environmental
Protection told Cargill on Aug. 10 that a 100- foot
section of the dike was 15 feet wide, short of the
state-required 18 feet. The agency also warned that
water in the reservoir atop the stack was too high;
only an inch or two of rain would raise it to the
top of the berm, the DEP wrote in a warning letter.
Cargill immediately started trying
to thicken the dike, company officials said, but the
work could not be completed in time. The berm gave
way in the thin southwest section, the area the state
had pointed out.
Gray Gordon, vice president of Cargill
Crop Nutrition, said the dike was not thick enough
because workers were trying to raise its height to
cope with the water levels fueled by unusually heavy
rainfall this summer.
``We didn't have enough gypsum to
build it up in a day or two,'' Gordon said. ``We were
desperately trying to get as much gypsum as we could.
And you can usually only run one bulldozer along the
limited roadway.''
At Cargill and other phosphate processors,
heavy equipment pushes the phosphogypsum into stacks
that can reach 250 feet in height. Water used in the
process is pumped into reservoirs at the top of the
stacks.
State Suggested Safety Steps
The DEP sent Cargill another letter
Aug. 31, saying the company should do everything possible
to safeguard its impoundments in the face of Frances.
The agency suggested that Cargill start discharging
treated water and pumping to the top of an older stack
across U.S. 41 - a stack closed since 1990 - for additional
storage.
Cargill prides itself on recycling
wastewater and does not have a discharge permit, as
do most other phosphate operations. Gordon said the
company did not discharge because it did not want
to incur fines for doing so without a permit.
Also, Cargill did not think it had
enough trucks with the amounts of lime needed to treat
the water's acidity. That proved accurate after the
reservoir breach Sunday; at one point the company
ran out of the treatment substance while water surged
into the creek.
Cargill did respond to the letter
by starting to prepare the abandoned gypsum stack
for extra storage, Gordon said, but the company held
off on pumping. ``I don't think we were delinquent,''
he said. ``But there was this discussion about ...
don't automatically start pumping if this [storm]
doesn't come in. We wanted to try other options.''
Gordon maintains the spill would
not have happened if not for the waves caused by Frances'
counterclockwise motion. He conceded engineers focused
on the water the storm might bring, not waves.
DEP officials will take enforcement
action unspecified at this point, spokesman Russell
Schweiss said.
``Cargill could have treated and
discharged some of this water because of the emergency
situation,'' Schweiss said. ``They might have faced
a fine for the environmental impacts, but in all likelihood,
it would have been treated better than what it received''
during the spill.
Environmental Effects Unknown
Richard Boler, a scientist with
the county's Environmental Protection Commission,
said that although acidity is much higher than normal
in the creek, levels appear near normal in most of
the bay.
High acid levels can kill marine
life immediately.
Boler said the storm surge might
have diluted the wastewater in the bay, or it could
have pushed the acid into mangroves and wetlands on
the eastern shore.
There was no evidence of fish kills
Tuesday, but Boler said it could take a day or two.
Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached
at (813) 259-8303.
Additional articles:
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGBIRB6XUYD.html
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/06/Hillsborough/Acidic__radioactive_w.shtml
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-905spill,0,5970865.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/9591960.htm
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGB5JW6GTYD.html
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