St. Pete-Clearwater Sun

Five years after one of Florida’s worst environmental disasters, the site responsible — a former phosphate processing facility in Manatee County known as Piney Point — is on course to be permanently closed by the end of 2026.

For decades, crews processed phosphate at Piney Point to produce fertilizer, generating large amounts of wastewater that was stored in on-site gypsum stacks. In 2021, one of those stacks began to leak and threatened to collapse, prompting the state to authorize the discharge of more than 200 million gallons of industrial wastewater into Tampa Bay. The resulting surge of nitrogen and phosphorus triggered what environmental groups called the largest red tide bloom in Tampa Bay’s history, resulting in widespread fish kills.

A federal judge subsequently held the site’s operator, HRK Holdings, liable and approved a closure plan. The court appointed Herb Donica as receiver to oversee the shutdown.

Donica’s team has since used a deep injection well to treat and remove more than 600 million gallons of water from the gypsum stacks, sending it roughly 3,300 feet underground — below the aquifer level. Workers are now covering what remains on site with a combination of liner, sand, topsoil, and grass. Donica says no pond water remains on the property.

“All the water here is captured and managed,” Donica said. “We will no longer have the problem we saw in April, 2021.”

Donica said he hopes to complete the work and permanently close Piney Point by the end of this year.

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