Hacker News Reader

Comment by IAmEveryone | Hacker News Reader

Quotes for the ages:

"The water meets water quality standards for marine waters with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen,"

"Marine water" itself will kill with three or four easy gulps, but I guess this wastewater is going into the ocean? It still sounds a bit too much like "yellow, except for the color, which is blue". Plus I'd expect any industrial wastewater to have lots of fun contaminants they haven't tested for and/or just don't have explicit limits set.

"A very aggressive monitoring operation"

There's a term I've been missing my whole life. It's my go-to action item priority one from now on when faced with...

"... everything possible to prevent a true catastrophe."

And untrue catastrophe?

View on HN

The stack in danger of breaching was filled 8 years ago with sea water from dredging the port, and it is supporting wild life now, for what that's worth. In my experience, flora and fauna will grow under nearly any conditions, though.

And even flourish - lack of humans more than compensates high radioactivity levels, as the Tchernobyl example has shown.

It's not the radioactivity, it's the pH of 1.5-2. It kills most organisms quickly. There's no long term for long term radiation effects to manifest.

Phosphate industry waste water has a pH of 1.5-2. The ponds are sterile and a lovely azure despite what Google Maps shows. Nothing grows on their banks naturally, though with substantial remediation over a couple of decades, it's possible to surround the pond with a ring of pines and grass...this is the Florida phosphate industry's "land and lakes" program.

From time to time Florida developers have built housing developments on "land and lakes" tracts. It usually ends badly because the ground is unstable (still settling after all being mined), though post-tensioned prestressed concrete slab foundations can be used to reduce cracking (but not eventually uneven floors).

In my experience with phosphate industry sludge ponds, nothing much grows. I just looked at aerials from a tract southeast of Bartow that was under consideration for development in 1997. It had been out of service for almost twenty years back then. The ponds are no longer obviously toxic, but there is still does not appear to be normal Florida native vegetation along any of the shorelines.

Not surprising given how acidic phosphate sludge water is.

The fact that sea water can be stored in the leaking stacks over in Manatee county speaks to how sterile they are. The salinity of seawater is deadly to typical terrestrial plants.

After 57 years, I'm all too familiar with phosphate mining, but these ponds are not sterile. A lot of stuff is growing there.

This, https://www.google.com/maps/place/Manatee+County,+FL/@27.640...

Traditionally, Floridians call them "sludge ponds" as here, https://www.gainesville.com/news/20160929/mosaic-says-tests-...

I like the color quote. What's it a reference to? I got no hits on google.

Probably not what they were referencing, but it made me think of "The Expert" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

All mine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com