A massive sinkhole on top of a Mosaic gypsum stack near Mulberry allowed millions of gallons of contaminated water to flow into the Florida Aquifer.
A cascading waterfall falls into the huge chasm in the earth that opened up almost three weeks ago. Yes three weeks of radioative contamination.
Since the formation of the huge crater, about 215 million gallons of contaminated water have drained into the aquifer. The water is contaminated with phosphoric acid and is slightly radioactive.
The sinkhole is about 40 feet across. It’s depth is unknown. But it is deep! It sits right in the middle of a massive gypsum stack. Gypsum comes out of the plant after the company produces phosphate fertilizers and animal feed ingredients.
On Aug. 27, workers monitoring water levels discovered a drop and installed pumping systems to move water out of that compartment on the gypsum stack, to recover the water. It took a week for Mosaic workers to figure out where all that water was going.
You wouldn’t want to drink this water, but so far, Mosaic engineers don’t believe it is making it to private wells.
So far, the company maintains, everything is OK because the closest homeowners are all several miles away.
The next step is to repair the hole in the gypsum stack and continue monitoring to make sure the contaminated water is not getting into drinking water and that there’s no safety or environmental concern on top of the gypsum stack itself, as well as around the rest of the property.
