Florida environmental regulators on Monday settled a federal lawsuit with advocacy groups over the 2021 Piney Point wastewater disaster that dumped 215 million gallons of polluted water into Tampa Bay, likely sparking a red tide outbreak that caused widespread fish kills.
Five environmental advocacy groups agreed to dismiss their lawsuit against the state once regulators issue a permit aimed to prevent future pollution disasters and lay the groundwork for enforceable oversight at the troubled Manatee County phosphate plant.
Piney Point operated for more than two decades without the Clean Water Act permit meant to curb pollution from emptying into nearby waterways.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection also agreed to pay $75,000 for water quality monitoring around the area where Piney Point wastewater dumps into Tampa Bay. The money will go toward the Tampa Bay Estuary Program’s efforts to track oxygen levels, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and other metrics to determine the bay’s health.
“This failing facility has loomed over Tampa Bay for decades without any accountability, and this permit changes that,” said Ragan Whitlock, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which was part of the lawsuit.
“In many ways, this is too little too late,” he added. “Florida failed to properly regulate this facility, and the harm from the 2021 discharge can never be undone. It is unacceptable that it took citizen-suit enforcement and a massive pollution event to compel our state regulators to do their job.”
The groups that sued the state, including the nonprofit Our Children’s Earth Foundation and Tampa Bay Waterkeeper, say the settlement will improve transparency about water quality dumping from the plant and restricts pollutants known to cause ecological harm in Florida’s largest open-water estuary. In their 2021 lawsuit, the groups alleged “a decade of bad decisions by Florida regulators that directly led to the crisis.”
The state agreed to post future reports online of pollution leaving the Piney Point facility within 10 days of receiving them, according to the settlement. A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection did not respond to requests for comment.
The phosphate plant skirted environmental laws for over 20 years, and it took organizations coming together to push the state into compliance, according to Dan Snyder, director of Public Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Project. The settlement is a win for Floridians and “shows just how important citizen suits are in an age where regulators are too cozy with polluting industries,” he said.
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Explore all your optionsA 2023 research paper suggested the plume of dirty water leaving the troubled phosphate plant in 2021 had spread farther than previously thought, flowing outside of Tampa Bay and more than 30 miles away to waters near Tarpon Springs. The study added more scientific weight to the theory that red tide and other algal blooms that flared during summer 2021 were linked to the nutrient-laden discharges from Piney Point.
Last year, Manatee County utility crews drilled a well to a saltwater aquifer 3,300 feet below the earth’s surface to begin pumping Piney Point’s water underground. As of Friday, more than 209 million gallons had been “transferred for disposal” underground, according to Florida environmental regulators. That’s enough water to fill more than 315 Olympic swimming pools.
The Tampa Bay Times toured the phosphate plant last last year to document progress on the site’s eventual closure. Herb Donica, a lawyer and the court-appointed overseer of the plant, told the Times that “shutting the plant down is an angry animal.” It’s time consuming and expensive, he said.
While a state-approved plan had estimated Piney Point would close by December, site managers said earlier this year it will likely be mid-2025.
After the disaster, the site owners HRK Holdings entered bankruptcy. The groups who sued the state are still seeking accountability for the company from a U.S. district judge.
“The Piney Point disaster shook the Tampa Bay community to its core. It wasn’t too long ago that shorelines once teeming with life were littered with all kinds of dead fish for months. If you had previously found it swimming in Tampa Bay, it was likely dead after Piney Point,” said Justin Tramble, executive director of Tampa Bay Waterkeeper.
“This brings some closure to the past and shifts the focus to making sure mechanisms are in place to prevent even more tragedy in the future.”