About 4 million gallons of stormwater will be released into Tampa Bay from the defunct Piney Point phosphate facility.
The permitted release was expected to begin this month and last a couple of days.
The site management team at Piney Point indicated the stormwater is not contaminated like the nutrient-heavy wastewater released from Piney Point in the spring of 2021.
The stormwater discharge is needed so the gypstack can be closed, part of the ongoing process to permanently shut down Piney Point.
Suncoast Waterkeeper, in a post on Facebook, said a “woefully inadequate closure plan” was driving the discharge.
“We will follow this issue closely,” the nonprofit stated.
In the spring of 2021, about 215 million gallons of nutrient-rich wastewater was discharged into the Tampa Bay estuary to avoid a large-scale disaster at Piney Point.
The DEP approved the discharges, now the focus of a lawsuit filed by conservation groups, including Suncoast Waterkeeper.
Groups also are challenging the closure plan, which the DEP approved in March.
The plan involves moving Piney Point’s wastewater into a deep-injection well system and covering the phosphogypsum stacks that currently hold the polluted water.
— Lisa Neff