Gov. Ron DeSantis

A leak at a defunct phosphorus plant in Manatee County is threatening to unload hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic water into Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico and flood the surrounding area.

More than 300 homes have been evacuated over the weekend near the Eastport Terminal Facility while 33 million gallons a day of wastewater filled with nitrogen, phosphorus and potentially other chemicals is deposited into Port Manatee.

“We are trying to prevent and respond to if need be, a real catastrophic flood situation,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference on Sunday.

“The water quality issues that are flowing from this for us is less than everybody’s health and safety,” he said. “Public health and safety is the top priority.”

DeSantis said the aim is to minimize environmental impacts and prevent an uncontrolled discharge into Port Manatee.

There have been controlled discharges of 33 million gallons per day of the wastewater released since March 30 to prevent massive flooding.

The Division of Emergency Management has deployed 20 pumps to the area and 10 vacuum trucks.

The water is “primarily saltwater from the Port Manatee dredged project mixed with legacy processed water and stormwater runoff,” DeSantis said.

“It’s not radioactive,” he said, adding “The primary concern is nutrients.”

“The water meets water quality standards for marine waters with the exception primarily of the phosphorus and nitrogen,” DeSantis said.

More than 100,000 bottles of water are being sent to Manatee County. The American Red Cross is putting families up in hotels.

HRK Holdings L.L.C., which is the responsible entity for the operation of the phosphogypsum stacks at Eastport Terminal facility, “will be held accountable,” DeSantis said.

The plant was built in the 1960s but was abandoned approximately 20 years ago after the company went bankrupt.

ManaSota-88, a Florida health and environmental nonprofit organization dating back to 1968 which was formed in part to monitor the environmental impact Piney Point plant, issued the following statement on its website:

“The gyp stacks at Piney Point have been mismanaged for decades. The current crisis can be traced back to the absurd 2006 decision to allow dredged material from Port Manatee to be placed into one of the gyp stacks at Piney Point, something the stack was never designed for, and should have never been allowed.

“The Manatee County Commission originally approved land use changes in the 1960s allowing for the construction of a fertilizer plant and gyp stacks at Piney Point, arguably the worst land use decision ever made in Manatee County’s history. What was falsely promoted as a benefit to the community has ended up being a tremendous cost to the public’s health, environment and taxpayers of Manatee County and Florida.”

According to ManaSota-88, HRK Holdings LLC recently reported to the Manatee County Board of County Commissioners that the Piney Point Reservoir holds 750 million gallons of water, which is about 92 percent of capacity. The site can only handle about 19 more inches of rainfall.

“Although there are no long-term plans to get rid of the contaminated water, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, HRK Holdings, and a few of the Manatee County Commissioners appear to subscribe to the theory that the solution to pollution is injection. It is assumed the Piney Point effluent would migrate to the Gulf of Mexico, however, because there are no long-term plans to filter the wastewater, the necessary high-pressure injection will likely create new paths of migration,” the organization stated on its website.

Glenn Compton, director of ManaSota-88, said a collapse of all three of the phosphogypsum stacks at the plant would be unprecedented in the amount of such waste being leaked into a waterbody. He believes, contrary to statements made by the governor, that the waste in the stacks, is radioactive.

Manatee County Administrator Dr. Scott Hopes said the plan is to deplete the holding ponds of the wastewater, filling the ponds and cap them. The worst case scenario if the retention pond is breached would be a 20-foot wall of wastewater flooding the area, he said.

Compton said the cost of solving the issue could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Compton expects significant algae blooms, fish kills and red tide to follow the environmental disaster. He expects the impacts of the pollution to be felt throughout the Gulf of Mexico.

“This will effect the entire Tampa Bay region and well into the Gulf of Mexico,” Compton said.