Piney Point Mosaic’s infamous phosphate plant dumped a hearty 215 million gallons of contaminated water into Tampa Bay a couple years ago, and now these goons want radioactive roads. Credit: PHOTO BY DAVE DECKER

Conservation groups have given notice that they will sue Manatee County over a plan to inject hazardous wastewater from the troubled former Piney Point phosphate plant into the ground.

The notice, announced Wednesday, was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Tampa Bay Waterkeeper, Suncoast Waterkeeper, ManaSota-88 and Our Children’s Earth Foundation.

A phosphate plant operated at the Piney Point site for more than three decades and left behind the waste product phosphogypsum and associated wastewater.

Piney Point drew heavy attention in April when Gov. Ron DeSantis declared an emergency as a leak in a reservoir forced an evacuation of nearby residents amid worries that a wall could collapse, leading to a flood of contaminated water.

Manatee County plans to use an injection well to dispose of wastewater from the site. But the conservation groups contend that would violate a federal law known as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

“In particular, (the groups) will allege that disposing of hazardous waste through underground injection presents an imminent and substantial endangerment by releasing, leaking, leaching or otherwise causing solid and hazardous waste to enter groundwaters, where it is then transported off-site into nearby groundwaters and the underlying aquifer,” the notice of intent to sue said. “Such disposal activities will cause violations of applicable groundwater quality standards and drinking water quality standards and threaten the purity of an underground drinking water resource relied upon by millions of Floridians, for both potable water and for irrigation use.”

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