Q&A of the Day – What Florida can learn from Piney Point’s history
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Today’s entry: what's the whole story behind Piney Point?
Bottom Line: I was working on this story last week prior to the good news that a crisis had been averted and turned my attention to other issues based on breaking news out the state legislative session. Governor DeSantis’s decision to put an end to the site, as he ordered Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to create a closure plan brought this back into the news and it’s a good opportunity to establish how we arrived here. Also, because everything seemingly is politicized these days it’s helpful to cut through some of the incomplete reporting about how the Piney Point reservoir became an environmental catastrophe in the making.
The story began in 1966 with a company called Borden Chemical opened a plant which began processing phosphate for fertilizers used by Florida’s agriculture industry. The processing of phosphate produces toxic wastewater. Originally there wasn’t a plan to deal with the wastewater and Borden collected and discharged the wastewater directly into Bishop Harbor which resulted in fish kills. That caught the attention of state officials. In 1970 it was determined a reservoir needed to be created to contain the wastewater which would, in theory be treated and time released as needed to more responsibility dispense the water. The plant changed hands numerous times between 1966 and 2001 – the last year of operation when a company called Mulberry operated it. Mulberry went bankrupt in 2001 – when they ceased operations and Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection stepped in to maintain the plant and reservoir when a company called HRK Holdings bought the site as part of a land purchase. HRK assumed responsibility for the site. However, the Great Recession took its toll on HRK’s properties and they likewise went bankrupt in 2012. Five different entities, four locally based and one a New York based investment firm bought HRK’s assets out of bankruptcy - including the Piney Point plant – however they don’t appear to have ever appropriately maintained the site leading to the recent breach.
From the onset you can see the impact of poor planning by Borden Chemical, lax enforcement by the state and compromised decisions made after the fact. For those who’ve wanted to make this about partisan politics, I don’t see anything that supports that narrative. For those who want to play that game, it should be noted that Democrats were in complete control of Florida at the time the plant was founded and when the creation of the reservoir was determined to be the answer to dumping issues. Clearly Republicans are in control of Florida’s government most recently. Do with that what you will.
From my perspective, what Piney Point represents is a different version of a similar issue to what we’ve been trying to fix with South Florida’s water management issues. Really bad decisions made decades ago resulting in manipulated waterways. The better news is current state policy doesn’t allow for the haphazard actions of the past, like draining the Everglades, creating east-west canals from Lake Okeechobee, or developing new toxic wastewater sites. From here it’s just a matter of continuing to undo the problems of the past as constructively as possible.
Photo Credit: Getty Images