Florida Sinkhole Leaks 200 Million Gallons Of Contaminated Wastewater

A sinkhole opened up beneath a storage pond in Mulberry, FL late last month and more than 200 million gallons of contaminated wastewater from a fertilizer plant leaked into one of the state’s main sources for drinking water.

According to The Guardian, Mosaic, a large supplier of phosphate, stated that the hole had opened beneath a pile of waste material known as a “gypsum stack.”

Mosaic found no offsite impacts and said that it was monitoring the groundwater, The Guardian reported.

“Groundwater moves very slowly,” David Jellerson, Mosaic’s senior director for environmental and phosphate projects, told The Guardian. “There’s absolutely nobody at risk.”

The sinkhole was discovered by a worker late last month, Mosaic said in a press release, per The Guardian. The contamination is believed to reach to the Floridan aquifer, underground systems of porous rocks that hold water.

According to ABC News, residents in Polk County, FL, have asked for water quality testing after the plant acknowledged that the contaminated water reached into the aquifer.

The Mosaic Company apologized for waiting to inform the public about the leak, ABC News reported, even though they had already learned about “the seepage and [were] informing government oversight agencies” last month.

According to Reuters, Mosaic did not publicly disclose the news until mid-September. The company said that it noticed a decline in water levels on August 27 and notified authorities.

However, it did not notify residents until posting a notice on its website in September.

"I regret and apologize for not providing information sooner," Walt Precourt, a senior vice president of phosphates for Mosaic told the Polk County Board of County Commissioners, according to ABC News. "We immediately took steps to remove as much water from the leaking process pond as possible and are now operating a recovery well to remove the rest of the water from the aquifer."

Though Precourt assured that the contaminated water had not spread off Mosaic’s property, local residents are still concerned.

ABC News reported that to make up for the unfortunate circumstance, Mosaic said that it would be offering “free, third-party testing of locals' drinking water well upon request.”

Mosaic added that it would also provide free bottled water to residents upon request until the tests are complete.

The incident comes less than a year after Mosaic settled a vast federal environmental lawsuit with the U.S. EPA, reported The Guardian. The company agreed to nearly $2 billion in fixes, improvements, and cleanups at its plants.

Mosaic began diverting the pond water into an alternative holding area to reduce the amount of drainage when the problem was first detected, according to The Guardian. The company said it had been “recovering the water by pumping through onsite production wells.”

To read about similar incidences visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.