By Andrea Torres
September 17, 2016
WPLG
Source: United States Geological Survey
MULBERRY, Fla. – After a huge sinkhole opened up under a phosphate fertilizer plant, contaminated water with a slightly radioactive by-product seeped into a portion of the Florida aquifer system.
Environmentalists feared that some 215 million gallons of contaminated water could have contaminated the water supply, after a 45-foot-wide sinkhole opened at the Mosaic Company plant east of Tampa.
The system — one of the most productive artesian aquifers in the world — provides water for several cities in Florida and extends to southern areas of Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection was monitoring the offsite or long-term effects, as the leak at phosphate mining site had reportedly not spread out of a 1,600 acre area, authorities said on Saturday.
The Department of Environmental Protection was notified Aug. 28 — a day after Mosaic employees reported a leak in a pond where the company mines for phosphate rock.
This isn’t the first reported sinkhole at the plant. In 1994, when IMC owned the plant, there was a 120-foot wide sinkhole.
Mosaic has a history of environmental violations. Last year, they paid about $2 billion to settle a federal lawsuit related to violations of hazardous waste laws at eight sites in Florida and Louisiana.
Mosaic was paying for the testing of well water at their property’s neighboring homes. And they were pumping water from the aquifer to the surface to reuse it for the processing of phosphate.