When a tear in the lining of a wastewater pool at a former phosphate plant threatened to unleash a 20-foot wave of contaminated water into neighborhoods in Piney Point, Florida, officials had no choice but to pump millions of gallons of the water into Port Manatee, a cargo port along the eastern shore of Tampa Bay.
The transfer of 165 million gallons into the bay averted catastrophe. But scientists and state officials are now urgently monitoring the bay’s water quality, fearful that nutrients in the wastewater could lead to harmful algal blooms and disrupt the bay’s marine ecosystem.
The 77-acre containment pond contains a mix of
seawater, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Before the tear, first reported on March 25, it held 480 million gallons of wastewater. It is unclear how much of the remaining 303 million gallons will need to be drained to allow engineers to stabilize the pond, but some scientists and environmentalists are speculating all 480 million gallons might have to go.
“If they drain the whole pond, it’s basically the equivalent of a year’s worth of [nutrient pollution] being delivered from one source over a two-week period,” says Maya Burke, the assistant director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program.
The effect could be a disaster for marine life. Just like they help crops grow in fields, these nutrients fuel
explosive growth in algae, which in turn can kill an unknown portion of the bay’s wildlife, become a human health hazard, and jeopardize local businesses. In a worst-case scenario, the nutrients could cause a “red tide”—a toxic algal bloom of the kind that
in the past have wreaked havoc on Florida’s coastlines, killing fish, shellfish, turtles, dolphins, and manatees.