Plan to inject Piney Point waste underground to become reality in 2023

The amount of waste to be injected deep underground in Manatee County as a result of the environmental disaster at the former Piney Point fertilizer plant continues to grow as cleanup efforts are set to ramp up next year.

Authorities are preparing to inject hundreds of millions of gallons of waste at the former Piney Point fertilizer processing plant deep underground once construction of a new injection well is completed in 2023, a major step in the ongoing effort to clean up the troubled facility.

The cleanup also requires millions of gallons of bleach to treat polluted Piney Point waste water before it is injected underground just across the street from the site. Late last month, county commissioners also agreed to allow the company that produces that bleach in Palmetto, Allied New Technologies 2 Inc., to dispose of its waste in Manatee County.

In case you missed it:Piney Point closure could take until at least 2024. Manatee County progresses on injection well

Previously:More waste to be disposed of underground in Manatee County because of Piney Point

And:Plan to inject Piney Point wastewater underground has critics

"We are preparing within hopefully six months to begin injecting (Piney Point waste), and we will be getting if not hundreds of thousands of gallons of bleach from Allied, maybe millions of gallons of bleach from Allied, to treat the Piney Point waste before it goes down the Piney Point well," County Administrator Scott Hopes said at the November meeting.

Manatee County already owns three operational Class I injection wells and is building its fourth to specifically dispose of waste from the Piney Point facility. The waste produced by Allied New Technologies, however, will instead be disposed at a separate injection well at Buffalo Creek, located in the outskirts of Palmetto at the county's North Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

The Buffalo Creek well was originally built to meet the needs of a future salt water treatment plant that will not be used for years, but the county modified it's permit for the already constructed injection well earlier this year to make way for Allied's waste as well.

"We purchase their bleach for the swimming pools, for the water treatment plant, for the wastewater treatment plant, when we had to flush the lines under the Braden River, Myakka (water wells)," Hopes said. "We are a large customer. This is almost like family, and we are very fortunate to have them located where they are."

The wells are designed to federal standards, and are viewed by proponents as one of the safest options to dispose of certain types of waste. Their use will mark the first time waste created at piney point, or as part of its cleanup effort, is injected underground in Manatee County.

"This well was specifically drilled for a reverse osmosis plant, which takes salt water, takes the salt out of it, and this well was designed and built by the county to inject that salt water, that brine, into this well," Hopes said. "The brine that they have is pure, sterile, clean salt water."

Environmental advocates question those assertions, and believe injecting waste underground could harm drinking water aquifers if it were to fail.

District 5 Commissioner James Satcher was the only county official to question Allied and the plan during the November meeting, specifically because the company, which also has a facility in Fort Pierce, already has arrangements to dispose of its waste in another county.

He also criticized the decision to dispose of the company's waste at the Buffalo Creek site and not the site designed specifically for Piney Point waste.

"Here we have a deal where this stuff is going to another county, why not take advantage of that?" Satcher said. "And then, why in the world is Piney Point some sort of 'I will never put anything any different down there,' but right next to the school and right next to everyone's home no big deal… If it's important, then it should be important wherever it's at. I don't see the benefit of this. If this absolutely has to go down a well that is close by here, why not put it down Piney Point when it's done?"

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Piney Point: Plan to inject waste underground to become reality in 2023