MANATEE COUNTY – County commissioners have approved a construction agreement for a deep injection well as part of the efforts to permanently close the Piney Point property.
Located in Palmetto, near Port Manatee, the Piney Point property served as a phosphate processing plant from 1966 to 1999. Current owner HRK Holdings bought the vacated property in 2006.
After a leak was detected in one of the plant’s gyp stack retention ponds last month, 215 million gallons of polluted water were released into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee to prevent an accidental spill of even more wastewater.
County commissioners voted 6-1 on Tuesday, April 20 in support of a construction agreement with Youngquist Brothers Inc. for an injection well to hold the remaining contaminated water at a total cost not to exceed $9.35 million. Commissioner Reggie Bellamy opposed the agreement.
On April 6, the county commission authorized acting County Administrator Scott Hopes to secure the services of the Tampa-based ASRus firm to complete the design, permitting and construction-phase services for an underground deep injection well on county-owned property, and to secure a qualified party to construct the new well.
The construction agreement calls for one, 11.75-inch “nominal diameter Class I injection well” with a total depth of up to 3,500 feet. The well will be completed with a final carbon steel outer casing cemented to land surface, with a fiberglass reinforced plastic inner casing to land surface. Both the inner and outer casings will extend to the same approximate depth of 1,950 feet. The agreement also calls for one, six-inch nominal diameter dual zone monitoring well with an anticipated depth of about 950 feet.
According to a summary document included in the meeting packet, “Youngquist Brothers, as recommended by ASRus, is the appropriately qualified party to construct the well. The construction cost is $8.5 million; however, a 10% contingency is incorporated to account for any unforeseen circumstances and shall be used with the approval of the county. The substantial completion time is 330 calendar days from the issuance of the Notice to Proceed Construction, which allows for the time necessary to obtain the FDEP permit.”
The Piney Point wastewater will be treated before it’s discharged into the earth.
“We manage three deep wells right now. We have three and Tropicana has one. I’ve never gotten a complaint or concern about those three deep wells,” Commissioner Carol Whitmore said.
Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge said the deep well at the county’s 66th Street utilities plant in Bradenton can handle 15 million gallons of wastewater per day.
Drinking water concerns
Skye Gundy provided the commissioners with the perspective of a resident who lives near the Piney Point property.
“I’m here to talk about the ongoing disaster at Piney Point. I am one of the closest residents to the actual breach and leak. I am a lifelong community member of Manatee County, born and raised. After I came home from the University of Florida, I came home to serve the community that raised me. I bought my own slice of heaven. I own three acres of paradise – everything we love about Manatee County right there on three acres. This disaster has broken that tranquility and caused me to be angry and disillusioned at the governing bodies that are supposed to protect me, and quite anxious.”
Grundy also addressed the future safety of those impacted residents and property owners.
“I have three children and no one has tested my well water – or anybody on my street, or anybody in my community. We pay for private well testing and for the tests that we’ll have to do now it will be in the thousands of dollars; and if you’ve got a water treatment system, it will be thousands of dollars. I’m urging you to consider giving us public water or to help pay for our private water testing,” Grundy said.
District 1 Commissioner James Satcher later made a motion for the county to provide emergency well testing for residents living within a certain distance of the Piney Point property.
“We’re not the ones living there drinking that water. If we were, we’d want to get it tested. They didn’t create this issue,” he said.
Hopes said well testing is the responsibility of the Department of Health and he offered to coordinate those efforts with that state agency before spending county resources.
Van Ostenbridge suggested Satcher’s motion be amended as follows: “The board directs the county administrator to expedite the coordination of well testing near Piney Point.”
The amended motion passed by a 7-0 vote.
Satcher also shared his views on the future of phosphate mining in Manatee County.
“I understand the company that put this stack there is out of business, but if any company is doing anything similar to this, we’re going to have to change the rules and put our foot down. I don’t plan on voting for any more permits. I understand people need to eat and farmers need fertilizer, but not at the cost of our citizens; not at the cost of our bays; not at the cost of our beaches. That doesn’t cut it any longer,” he said.
Regarding the Piney Point property, Van Ostenbridge noted: “It was never a mine. It was a phosphorus processing plant that started back in the 60s. The company went bankrupt and here we are. There are no other processing plants in Manatee County.”
County Attorney Bill Clague provided additional clarification and said, “Our local mining ordinance prohibits the construction of any new gyp (phosphogypsum) stacks or phosphorus plants in Manatee County. It has since 2004. Our local regulations do not allow them to ever build one of these again in Manatee County. This is the only one in Manatee County. The other mountains that you see on mines are clay settling areas, they’re not gyp. Are they environmentally great? No, but they’re not the same level of concern as a gyp stack.”
According to the Manatee County website, “There are currently over 17,000 acres of land approved for phosphate mining in Manatee County. Only one company is actively mining phosphate in Manatee County: Mosaic Fertilizer.”
Before the discussion ended, Satcher made another motion proposing access to county water service be extended to those who live near Piney Point who are not currently serviced by county water. This prompted a discussion on the significant costs that the county and the impacted property owners would incur.
As an alternative, Commission Chair Vanessa Baugh suggested the following future action: “We are asking public utilities to give us a report on that particular area by Piney Point – the residences and business there who are on well and what it might take to change that, if possible.”
Satcher accepted Baugh’s suggestion. The commission also extended its local state of emergency declaration regarding Piney Point.
