(ETH) – Officials have ordered hundreds of residents in Manatee County, Florida, to evacuate their homes over Easter weekend over fears of a wastewater pond that could collapse “at any moment and produce a “catastrophic event”.
The event even prompted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency for the entire area. According to the report, the pond is located at the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant, and is producing a “significant leak,” The details of the report stated that local residents were ordered to evacuate by the Manatee County Public Safety Department due to an “imminent uncontrolled release of wastewater.”
“A portion of the containment wall at the leak site shifted laterally,” said Manatee Director of Public Safety Jake Saur, “signifying that structural collapse could occur at any time.” The evacuation zone was within half a mile of Piney Point and surrounding stretches of highway were also closed to traffic.
Governor DeSantis stated that officials are currently pumping out 33 million gallons of water a day from the pond and that the water “is not radioactive,” even though another official warned that the water is “not water we want to see leaving the site.” “We’re hoping that we can just continue to get the water out in an efficient way to prevent a catastrophic event,” DeSantis said.
According to Officials that were present at the meeting, the greatest threat at the moment is flooding. Even after days of pumping water out of a reservoir, there are still roughly 3,450 million gallons of wastewater that could suddenly be unleashed. Acting Manatee County administrator Scott Hopes warned that if the reservoir were to fully collapse, that one model reveals that the area could see a “20-foot wall of water” within minutes.
“In addition to high concentrations of radioactive materials, phosphogypsum and processed wastewater can also contain carcinogens and heavy toxic metals,” the center said in a statement on Saturday. “For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates 5 tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste, which is stored in mountainous stacks hundreds of acres wide and hundreds of feet tall.”
