Crews race to drain Florida waste water reservoir on brink of collapse
04/05/2021 18:08
(Reuters) -Crews were working around the clock on Monday to prevent the collapse of a waste water reservoir s leaky containment wall near Tampa Bay, Florida, making steady progress after officials warned of an imminent threat of flooding over the weekend.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was working alongside local emergency management crews to drain waste water from the Piney Point reservoir, which holds about 480 million gallons, in an effort to avoid a breach that could have flooded the surrounding area with a 20-foot wall of water, officials said.
The main concern at Piney Point right now is to stop the south pond from collapsing. If it does, one expert said that could potentially release radioactive material from two surrounding ponds into Tampa Bay.
â50,000 bags of fertilizer:â What could Piney Point do to Tampa Bay?
Scientists are trying to forecast what comes next. Environmentalists fear algal blooms and fish kills.
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The focus for emergency teams at the old Piney Point phosphate plant property is stopping a flood from surging out of an enormous, leaking reservoir of polluted water.
Success on that front could mean pumping
a majority of the 480 million gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay, posing an ecological danger to the treasured estuary that clean water advocates say may endure for weeks or months.
âThatâs like dumping 50,000 bags of fertilizer into the bay all at once,â said Ed Sherwood, director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, on what a full drain of the pond could mean.
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Additional pumps were scheduled to come online this morning and should double the amount of water that can be taken out.
Crews remain at the scene Monday of the leaking Piney Point processing plant in Manatee County and are monitoring the conditions as it threatens to breach.
Over the weekend, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a state of emergency at the phosphate processing pond, which if it breaches could result in hundreds of millions of gallons of water flowing into the neighboring area and Tampa Bay.
Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes on Sunday provided a more optimistic assessment, a day after a breach at the processing plant located near the Hillsborough County line, south of Sun City Center was termed “imminent.”
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