Feds expect to decide this year on Mosaic’s ‘radioactive roads’ plan in Florida Federal environmental regulators said they expect to decide this year on a controversial proposal that would allow Tampa-based Fortune 500 mining company Mosaic to test its phosphate waste as an ingredient in road construction. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency informed Mosaic in a May 20 letter that the agency is reviewing the company’s proposal to blend 1,200 tons of its mildly radioactive waste byproduct, called phosphogypsum, into a test roadway at the company’s New Wales plant in Mulberry. An agency spokesperson told the Tampa Bay Times on Wednesday they expect a decision by the end of the year. DeSantis last year signed a controversial bill that allowed the Florida Department of Transportation to study using phosphogypsum in roadways and release a report by April. The measure, dubbed the “radioactive roads” bill by critics, was lobbied by Mosaic. The company also hosted and paid nearly $25,000 for a fundraising event for the state lawmaker who sponsored the bill, Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Plant City. Feds expect to decide this year on ‘radioactive roads’ plan
It's sad that Desantis would be ok with this but I guess it's all in the name of freedom. What could go wrong?
Apparently nothing, people on this board (even ones who IMO should know better that arent DeSantis fan boys) assured me that the industry scientists hired by Mosaic said the levels were perfectly safe for people.
Sad that he's allowing this to go forward after the inconclusive long-term effects including the risks. Did you not read the article?
I am the furthest thing from a DeSantis fan. The limited reading I did when this was proposed made me think it's not automatically a terrible idea. That doesn't mean I'm endorsing the idea, just that it may be worth studying. The radioactive element in phosphogypsum are not man-made. They were naturally occurring in our environment from the beginning. The fertilizer trade takes material from the environment, strips out some stuff to make fertilizer, and then holds the leftover phoshogysum in huge piles. The proposal to use it as bulk roadfill, essentially spreading it back out into the environment as it was naturally occurring. The question is, can you spread it out enough to put it on par with what you had before extraction? I don't know, but a study could help answer that question. It may very well be safer to spread it out than having a million tons of it concentrated in a single pile somewhere. Also worth noting, the radioactive we're talking here isn't Chernobyl/uranium level radiation. We're talking about the radioactive byproduct generating small amounts of radon gas, same thing many people deal with in their basements. You know how you deal with radon? You ventilate the basement. Road fill causing small amounts of radon outdoors does not lead to an accumulation, so is not expected to be a health concern. (I'll sit back and wait for my plate of bacon )
Whether its safe or not these things sit around in piles away from people, and the best case scenario is the government doing the bidding of the industry in a novel way to dispose of their waste at our expense.
Possibly - but contrast the worst case scenario is a phosphogypsum stack that collapses, like the issues happening at Piney Point, threatening to put a concentration of radium into the watershed, or even the aquifer. Couple of interesting nuggets here:
Concentrated pig shit from pig farms might be more catastrophic to the aquafer in a big pile than putting a tiny little pig shit in bottles of drinking water. Doesnt mean I want pig shit in my drinking water.
