FL to use polluted wastewater for yards, to wash off into the bay.

http://www.baynews9.com/NewsStory.cfm?storyid=22530

Well, let me understand. After several days of dumping this highly acidic toxic water 120 miles out in the Gulf, it was discovered it was trailing in the Keys.....may destroy their coral reefs.

So, then, they have now voted for an really intelligent idea (sarcasm):

SNIP......"On Thursday afternoon, the St. Pete City Council agreed to mix the plant's treated wastewater with the city’s reclaimed water. But that has upset some residents, because the water may include arsenic, lead and mercury.

Right now the acidic water is being dumped far out into the Gulf of Mexico.

"If this phosphate is benign, why did they have to dump it one hundred and twenty miles away from us," said Bill Mills of St. Petersburg....."

This water will be used to water yards, and it will of course run off into the bay. No one know the impact of combining these two wastes. Thanks to Jeb and Company for all the good planning they have done for our state. :shrug:

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They have been using recycled wastewater. That is not what I meant. This is the water they were dumping in the Gulf but found that too dangerous. This is the water that killed off the lifeforms in the Alafia River a few years ago.

It is different in the great acidity of its nature.

I was being a little sarcastic in my reply. They did a test of the city water not too long ago and they found a high level of a parasite that you'd expect to find in a third world country. Imagine what they do with the semi-sewage they apply to golf courses.

Are the coral reefs in the Keys protected by federal law? Or does The Conch Republic have more pull than I thought?

The B*shes are bent on creating another Texas.

this with interest even though I live far away from Florida and the ocean. It amazes me that any of this could happen, it is so sad. As a scuba diver I have seen so much damage. In Hawaii I helped with collection of dead Cowries. There were hundreds all along the big resorts with the humongous golf courses, run off. I don't know how we could be so short sighted to produce things we do not know how to properly dispose of. It is just plain stupid. I am sorry this is happening to you first but it will affect us all in time. Thanks for keeping this story going.

is the phosphate and the problem with phosphate is that it is a great nutrient. That is why it would kill some life forms in a river. The high nutrient level causes the algae to take over and it robs most of the oxygen from the water, causing a die off, of some of the other animals.

However, Florida is the biggest source for phosphate in the world. Without phosphate to fertilize our crops we wouldn't have enough food to feed the world. So this phosphate with trace elements of other lovely heavy metals is already being spread all over most of the food we eat.

Taking the water from this mine and using it to water lawns is probably not that bad a way to get rid of it. It probably isn't much worse than what they are already using to fertilize their lawns.

I live in a county in which the damage done will be covered up for years. I was once told by a DEP agent that they could not come down hard on them for all the little blue clouds in the sky at night. They needed their tax base too much. I will never forgot that statement. If it must be taken that far into the Gulf and still has alarm bells ringing, it must not be safe enough to use on yards...causing it to drain off into bodies of water.

Here are snips from a google cache article from March on the subject of the gypsum stacks and the dangers. Linking to cache is hard.

QUOTES......."TALLAHASSEE - State environmental regulators say they need to spend $45 million in the coming year to pump 750 million gallons of contaminated water from a former phosphate fertilizer plant in Manatee County.

Nearly 800 million gallons of acid- laden water is stored atop radioactive phosphogypsum stacks at the Piney Point plant near Port Manatee. Officials with the Department of Environmental Protection told a state House committee that if the water isn't removed before the summer rainy season, the chances of a catastrophic spill are high. A previous spill devastated the plant and animal life in the Alafia River.

``Anything it comes in contact with would obviously be killed,'' Allan Bedwell, DEP deputy secretary for regulatory programs, told legislators.

The DEP wants to build a pipeline to take the treated water from the old Mulberry Corp. plant to Port Manatee. The water would be loaded onto ships headed out into the Gulf of Mexico where it would be diffused over an 18,000-square-mile area.

The state has been in control of Piney Point and aplant in Polk County since Mulberry Corp. went bankrupt in early 2001. The DEP has been able to manage the water so far by treating it and trucking it to Tampa Bay.

But the treated water has heavy concentrations of nitrogen, which robs water of oxygen and causes harmful algae blooms. And trucking the water doesn't get rid of it quickly enough. One inch of rain can increase the volume of water on the gypsum stacks by 12 million gallons, Bedwell said.

``We were within two weeks of closing this site, but the rains in December washed away our effort,'' Bedwell said.

being watered with what had to be sewer water. No one could stand being there because of the lingering smell. Of course, it didn't matter much, because it just seeped into the arsenic poisoned groundwater.