It's a cool, windswept morning as Jeff Barath points out the view from the top of the Piney Point gypsum stack.
“This is Piney Point. You have the Skyway bridge, you have the port of Manatee, you can see St. Petersburg across the bay here, then you have Tampa that's directly behind it,” he said.
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Barath is the site manager at Piney Point, where decades of waste products from phosphate production are stored in massive piles called gypstacks. He's been here more than 20 years and knows the place better than anyone.
Barath is working with Herb Donica, who was appointed by a court to close the plant after its owner declared bankruptcy. Together they are making sure the massive spill that caused one of the worst environmental catastrophes in Tampa Bay four years ago never happens again.
“This is the New Gypstack South or NGSS,” Donica said, pointing to the nearly empty pond. “The leak was on this side, over here close to the corner.”
The "leak" formed in March 2021. That's when a tear appeared in the liner that holds polluted water from the gypstack.
More than 200 million gallons were released into Tampa Bay. Shortly after, the biggest red tide bloom recorded in the bay broke out, and hundreds of tons of fish and other marine life went belly-up. Several scientific reports linked the release to the fish kills.
Now, that gypstack will soon be covered with a thick liner and grassed over – eliminating threats to the bay. Another stack at Piney Point is also being closed this month.
Donica says they're hoping to have the whole site closed and covered by the middle of next year.
“This is the most important job I've had in my adult life. This matters. This is tangible,” he said. “We are accomplishing something that has been decades of problems.”
This stack used to hold roughly 250 million gallons. Then last year, hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton piled on the rain.
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“We had from 20 to 25 inches more than the average normal,” Donica said. “We're dealing with it. Every inch is 4 million gallons in the system.”
That translates to 80 million gallons that started filling up the stack again last year. The pond rose 9 inches just from the storms.
“Having two hurricanes in 13 days is really hard to predict,” he said. “It's pretty amazing, actually. I will tell you that our people here did an amazing job of securing everything that could, but we came out damage-free almost.”
The stack has gone down 8 feet since Hurricane Milton in October.
The water in the gypstack pond is down to nearly the bottom. Some water has to stay to allow a dredge to float and scoop out the nasty sediment.
The dredge suctions the bottom, about a foot off the liner, and the sediment is pumped into fabric layers called geotubes, located in the nearby New Gypstack North. There are 300 geotubes, where the dredge material is mixed with a coagulant to harden the mixture. After the water drains out, the geotubes will be entombed, with a thick liner and sand placed over it, 2 feet of soil and then grassed over.
The water is treated and piped to a nearby deep injection well. About 700,000 gallons a day are pumped more than half a mile below the drinking water aquifer. Every four days, it takes the level down an inch.
“I had no idea that dredging was such an art,” Donica said. “There's a lot of science there, but you need experienced people to handle these things, to understand the dynamics of polymer, slurry.”
The fill sand is being donated by Mosaic. The outer walls will be lowered roughly seven feet before the liner is placed.
The liner can last hundreds of years. Maybe by then, Donica hopes, they'll find a use for these old gypstacks so they're no longer a threat to the immediate environment.
Eventually, the stack will be covered with a liner, filled with sand and grassed over. So it should never be a threat again.
Rainwater on top of the liner will be routed to a stormwater ditch that eventually flows into Tampa Bay.
“We haven't seen the bottom of this pond for how many years?” Donica asked Barath. The answer: “The last time we saw the bottom of this pond would have been April of 2011.”
What a lot of people don't know is the stack that caused the spill was just about empty a dozen years ago. But the site's owners, HRK Holdings, got paid to take sediment and seawater that was being dredged for a shipping channel at nearby Port Manatee.
Then, in 2011, about 170 million gallons of toxic water spilled into Tampa Bay. The owners filed for bankruptcy, and the stack filled up again.
Donica said the 2021 spill finally got the attention of the state. Gov Ron DeSantis ordered the plant's closure and allocated funds to help develop a plan.
“I don't think what happened in March of 2021 was a good thing, having that water spray out into the bay and being blamed for red tide and all that, but it did serve a purpose,” he said. “It woke people up. And Gov. DeSantis, to his credit, said no more kicking the can down the road. This is going to stop and stop now. We're going to take care of this problem, and he has provided funding for this.”
So far, Donica said, the state has provided about $185 million. When it’s all done, his workers will then find themselves without a job.
“They are rabid environmentalists. They want this to work. They want to push this across the finish line, no matter what. They know they're working themselves out of the job,” he said.
And he can’t wait to work himself out of a job, as well.
“It's vitally important for this area to make it safe, make people comfortable in their homes. To make sure they're not feeling that we're poisoning the environment. We're cleaning it up, knocking it down,” he said. “It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good.”
By this time next year, the hope is that any threats from Piney Point will be done – for good.
