Your drinking water not affected by aquifer contamination

The New Wales sinkhole was not the first phosphogypsum sinkhole, and will likely not be the last, a reality that sheds new light on efforts to expand two of the state’s existing phosphate mines and approve a new mine.

The company says they have also increased the number of monitoring wells, and that they’ve found nothing wrong.

A large sinkhole has caused contaminated wastewater to flow into an aquifer in Polk County, Florida in the US.

The move comes weeks after a leak was discovered on August 27 at its New Wales facility in central Florida after a sinkhole opened up under a pile of contaminated waste. “And given how porous our aquifer can be, it can be hard to know where that water is going to end up”.

The St. Johns River Water Management District echoed that, saying the 18 counties they serve- including all of the Jacksonville-metro area- are not at risk.

He said what happened at the Mosaic plant just proves mining for phosphate is bad for the environment, even in the best case scenario.

JEA further says that, while this incident is not affecting local water, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection does continue to frequently test local sources.

The DEP’s Miller says the waste water pond was emptied by the sinkhole, but some seepage continues through the stack into the ground.

The leak occurred after a 45-foot wide, 300-foot deep sinkhole opened under a gypsum stack at its plant in Mulberry.

Unknown to many Floridians, the state leads the nation in the environmentally destructive practice of phosphate mining, a process that creates phosphogypsum waste – fertilizer byproduct with low levels of radiation – that is stored in stacks hundreds of feet tall. “These phosphate companies are playing roulette with our public waters”. In 2010, when an 11-day cold snap prompted strawberry farmers to pump almost 1 billion gallons water a day from the aquifer to protect their crops, more than 85 new sinkholes opened up across eastern Hillsborough County. The Times reports Mosaic is using a recovery well to pump thousands of gallons of water from the aquifer back to the surface in an effort to recover contaminants.