Phosphate mining disaster in Florida

The Bone Valley region, also known as the Peace River Watershed, is located in southwestern central Florida, about 30 miles east of the Tampa Bay Area. The Peace River watershed includes portions of present-day Hardee, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Polk counties where phosphate is mined for use in agricultural fertilizer production. Florida currently contains the largest known deposits of phosphates in the United States.

Take a look from space

Take a closer look at what you can see on Google Maps. see hyperlink:

“https://www.google.com/maps?ll=27.840787,-81.99678&z=10&t=m&hl=en-US&gl=US&mapclient=embed” You will see a large area of ​​land, about thirty miles east of the Tampa Bay Area, on the Florida panhandle. This area is known as the Peace River Basin. Here you will see numerous very large square or rectangular man-made mine shafts, filled with clear fresh water from crushed aquifer systems.

These square wells filled with fresh water from the aquifer stand apart from Florida’s beautiful natural blue lakes and ponds. These giant square pits are artificial craters created by phosphate draglines digging for phosphates a hundred feet into Florida’s natural water supply. The water supply is in the form of underground water tables or “aquifer systems”. Google Maps clearly shows that phosphate draglines have stripped and scarred the land of Southwest Central Florida by an entire square mile of a phosphate mine, alone.

The term “surcharge” of the phosphate industries is more commonly known to the layman as lakes, ponds, trees, grasslands, grasslands, rivers, natural springs, aquifer systems, watersheds, etc. The draglines are so large and numerous that they remove thousands of acres of “waste” in just one month’s work. These massive draglines mine down a hundred feet, penetrate, then completely flatten and remove Florida’s natural water systems. Untold volumes of water no longer contained in the aquifer system are free to fill newly created phosphate wells in the land of southwestern central Florida.

At the time of this writing, the phosphate mining industry continues to purchase thousands of square miles of critical wetlands, aquifer systems and watersheds in order to strip mine the contents. All of this happens with the permission of the state and counties in Florida when they issue permits for open pit phosphate mines. Unfortunately, these permits give the phosphate strip mining industry access to Florida’s rich geography, including Florida’s unique aquifer systems. Florida’s aquifer systems took nature millennia (thousands of years) to perfect and many are now totally extinct. Is Florida Phosphate More Valuable Than Florida’s Watersheds and Aquifers? Florida politics and the phosphate strip mining industry say it’s every day. The (2) Florida Department of Environmental Protection Services says, “…in 2000, $1.13 billion worth of phosphate-based fertilizers were exported from Florida, making it another top export of Florida.” Florida”.

Phosphate draglines in action

The (1) United States Geological Society (USGS) believes that draglines can be hundreds of feet tall and can also weigh hundreds of tons. One dragline’s huge bucket holds 65 cubic yards of waste, which will completely fill 10 standard dump trucks. The dragline removes up to 100 feet of soil known to be overburden by the phosphate industry. Unfortunately, the top 60 feet of land contains the real treasures of Florida.

The overburden is simply discarded, leading to “heaps of phosphate waste”. These rubble heaps are arranged next to what are called the “phosphate mine shafts”. The phosphate mine pits look like a moonscape as opposed to the look of Florida’s natural beauty. The open pit phosphate mining industry operates 365 days a year throughout southwestern central Florida. This relentless removal of the surge by the Florida phosphate industry causes irreparable damage to Florida’s aquifer systems.

Basins and Aquifers

The Peace River watershed covers 2,300 square miles in southwestern Central Florida. It contains most of Florida’s phosphate mining industry, including Bone Valley. As mentioned above, open pit phosphate mining companies use draglines to remove surface soils (known as overburden) 100 feet deep, removing thousands of contiguous acres of Florida’s aquifer systems.

Florida state law requires surface reclamation (60 feet deep). Wetlands are reclaimed acre by acre, type by type. The phosphate industry reports that more than 180,000 acres (728 km2) have been reclaimed in the Peace River Basin. The phosphate industry vigorously promotes its reclamation projects as wetland and watershed reclamation. Unfortunately, we are only being given half-truths.

All the truth

Aquifer systems cannot simply be replaced during the recovery phase. This fact is not subjective because man cannot replace what nature took thousands of years to create. The aquifers are gone, along with one of Florida’s most amazing natural resources, abundant clean fresh water. The phosphate industry claims to have reclaimed more than 180,000 acres. This is only half true because it does not include the same number of acres of Florida’s aquifers that are gone forever. Ironically, phosphate is a declining export.

Dragline Job Defined

WIKIPEDIA states: “Large traveling draglines, operating around the clock in open pit mines, excavate raw phosphate pebbles mixed with clay and sand (known as matrix) in Bone Valley…”.

Are Florida’s aquifer systems linked to sinkholes?

The (1) USGS believes that the areas prone to collapsing into sinkholes are located below the ground in southwestern central Florida. Sinks can be induced by large amounts of water consumption, including open pit phosphate mines. These sinkholes form based on rock types, aquifer formations, destruction of aquifer formations, and lack of groundwater. This is based on geological hydraulic pressure created by aquifer systems. Therefore, the lack of surface water pressure due to the destruction of the aquifer formation causes the overburden to become unstable and collapse, in some cases. Unfortunately, loss of life and property can occur in a surface collapse. Once again, the evidence points to the phosphate industry in the form of sinkholes caused by the destruction of aquifer formation.

Aquifers are nature’s hydraulic lifts. Filled with water, aquifers cannot be compressed, so the surface above aquifer systems is stable, meaning there are no sinkholes. However, when the aquifers are ground down and disposed of, the water in these aquifers is now free of containment. This large volume of water fills extraordinarily large and deep wells with clear, clean, fresh water. The most interesting thing is that nature is now working against us in the form of sinkholes that develop over and geologically close to crushed aquifer systems.

The watersheds and aquifers of southwestern central Florida are dying out due to the destruction of the aquifer system formation through open pit phosphate mining operations. Florida’s treasures, known to the Florida phosphate mining industry as phosphate overburden, are being destroyed for valuable phosphate.

Florida’s aquifer systems are being completely removed along with overburden using huge phosphate draglines. Valuable phosphate is removed leaving (visible from Google Maps) huge blue holes. These beautiful big blue holes are tens of thousands of acres of open pit phosphate mine pits where the local natural aquifers have been completely destroyed.

Not surprisingly, the Tampa Bay area of ​​Florida is a sinkhole disaster. This area is directly adjacent to the largest open pit phosphate mines in the continental United States, where the entire land area of ​​southwestern central Florida is supported by the largest aquifer system in the state. The system is known as the Flordan water system. see hyperlink:

(1) The United States Geological Survey (USGS).
(2) The Florida Department of Environmental Protection Services.