Eyes on Piney Point

In March 2021, the eyes of the world turned to a shuttered phosphate plant in Manatee County, Florida. A leak of a wastewater storage pond at the Piney Point phosphate plant threatened to rupture and flood local neighborhoods and Tampa Bay with hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic fertilizer wastewater.

Piney Point was once the site of a ferry that brought visitors across the Bay to St. Petersburg prior to the building of the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the 1950s. The coastal waters adjacent to the Piney Point facility are home to essential wetland ecosystems such as the estuaries at Cockroach Bay Preserve.

In the days following the crisis, Governor Ron Desantis declared a State of Emergency to apply resources to avoid the impending collapse. Working around the clock, teams slowly drained the wastewater and narrowly avoided a catastrophic flooding incident. Much of the water was ultimately drained into the bay, leaving lingering questions about the long-term impacts.

The events at Piney Point have underscored the importance of studying historical documents and both past and present environmental impacts of the phosphate industry. As part of USF Libraries' Florida Environment and Natural History (FLENH) initiative, this exhibit serves as an introduction to phosphate mining in Florida and a launching point to discover related archival, scholarly, and news resources.

The University of South Florida Libraries' FLENH initiative positions USF as a leader among U.S. academic institutions by establishing a central repository for environmental and natural history data and providing sustainable institutional support for the ingest, creation, and distribution of archival and secondary research resources centered on the impacts to, and effects on, Florida’s natural environment.

To facilitate the use of the FLENH collections, a portal has been established to showcase the work being done at USF Libraries.

FLENH is actively collecting materials related to environmental issues in the state of Florida. If you are a researcher who has materials you'd be interested in housing with USF Libraries,  click here to learn more! 

The phosphate industry in Florida dates back to the late 19th century when Albertus Vogt, known as “The Duke of Dunnellon,” discovered hard rock phosphate while managing water flow on his Marion County orange groves. This 1889 discovery led to a rapid era of development in Central Florida. The pebble phosphate industry experienced a similar rise in prominence, centered at the Peace River area near Fort Meade. Army Engineer Captain J. Francis Le Baron discovered the first pebble phosphate beds in 1884. The 2021 leak at Manatee County’s Piney Point phosphate plant has underscored the importance of studying historical documents and how the industry continues to impact the Florida environment. 

Phosphate extracted from mining is a key ingredient in chemical fertilizers. By 1890, Florida was exporting 40,000 tons of phosphate with Port of Tampa and Port of Fernandina serving as transportation hubs accounting for approximately 80% of national output and 25% of global supplies. Into the twenty-first century, phosphate remains an important commodity and a source of enriching market crops in the state of Florida, but only a fraction of Florida's original mines are active today with presences in Polk, Hillsborough, Manatee and Hardee counties.

After opening in 1966, issues plagued the Piney Point phosphate plant with leaks recorded as early as the 1980s. Environmental legislators and conservation groups have had their eyes on the site for decades, with many documents from the early 2000s reflecting a need to address potential catastrophic leaks. The Piney Point complex is home to a phosphoric acid plant, a series of phosphogypsum stacks, water processing facilities, and wastewater reservoirs. In 2001 the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) was notified that state intervention would be needed to manage a potential leak of 600 million gallons of acidic wastewater stored in engineered ponds across the site. Without the funds to manage the problem, the facility was left permanently vacant when the Mulberry Corporation, the site's most recent operators, filed for bankruptcy.

According to documents from the  Jan K. Platt papers , the State of Florida began mitigating the hazard in 2002, removing 145 million gallons of wastewater. However, record levels of rainfall the same year resulted in accumulation of an additional 280 million gallons of acidic wastewater. Strain on the existing dam infrastructure threatened land as well as human and wildlife inhabitants of the surrounding area. Groups such as the Tampa Bay Estuary Program recommended the relocation of treated wastewater into the Gulf of Mexico to mitigate the emergency. However, experts noted that harmful algal blooms, fish kills, and damage to seagrass could result from this course of action. Health and human safety were top priorities in the short-term, but monitoring guidelines were put in place to observe the situation. 

Emergency permitting and guidelines by the Environmental Protection Agency resulted in a recommendation to allow FDEP to transport treated wastewater offshore and release in areas of the Gulf of Mexico that do not support critical marine habitats and species. While efforts to close the gypsum stack compartments at the Piney Point site were still underway, the April 2003-April 2004 observation period coincided with 60.4 inches of rainfall, which was above the projected estimate. The Hillsborough Environmental Protection reported in 2004 that the amount of wastewater was substantially reduced by 570 million gallons due to the FDEP’s transfer program.   

USF Libraries - Tampa Special Collections is home to several archival collections that directly or indirectly relate to the environmental impacts of Piney Point. Historians, scientists, environmental interest groups, and policy makers have long studied the role of phosphate with regard to its impacts on Florida’s agricultural industry and economy, as well as its effects on the surrounding ecosystems and environment.

Explore some of our archival sources related to Piney Point and Florida phosphate by browsing previews of the collections, photographs, and the finding aids below.

Full collections are available for review by appointment in the Tampa Special Collections Reading Room.

Works Progress Administration Tampa Office Records

The papers of the Works Progress Administration Tampa Office Records include reports on Florida agriculture, farming, and fertilizers dating back to at least 1917. The collection contains extensive documentation regarding the administration of the WPA's Tampa Office, which was located in Ybor City at 1318 East 9th Avenue. The bulk of this collection consists of manuscripts and revised typescripts for the Florida edition of the American Guide Series. 

Pre-dating the 1940s New Deal, these WPA reports illustrate the research being conducted at the office. The documents show a contrast between growers who sought to use natural fertilizers and proponents of the benefits of phosphate in overcoming the challenging growing conditions in Florida.

You can preview a 1920 report titled "Sources of Fertilizer Material and Availability" using the button below. More information on fertilizers can be found in Box 4 of the physical collection.

IMC-Agrico Phosphate Company Collection

Companies began mining phosphate in Florida for commercial use in the 1890s. By the turn of the century, numerous companies were in operation, heavily concentrated in central Florida and especially what is now the Polk, Hillsborough, and Peace River Area. IMC-Agrico was formed by the merger of International Minerals and Chemical Company and the American Agricultural Chemical Company. Due to poor transportation and the isolation of the phosphate mines from urban centers, the phosphate industry built and ran company towns for their employees. Extensive records of Pierce, Brewster, Nichols, Tiger Bay and other “company towns” are also included in this collection. By 1913, Florida was responsible for more than 80% of the total United States production and roughly 20% of world production of hard rock and land pebble phosphate.

The collection includes annual and semi-annual reports, memos, property holding records, inventories, histories, correspondence, memoranda, and publications (1903 to the 1920s). Photographs (1904 to c. 1972) depict company structures and mining and dredging operations in Florida. Also includes records of the white and African American public schools in the “company town” of Pierce (1936-1943).

Skip Gandy Commercial and Aerial Photography Collection

Skip Gandy was born in Tampa in 1942. Beginning in the early 1970s, Gandy followed in his father's footsteps as a commercial photographer. With an innovative gyroscope-mounted camera in the belly of his plane, Gandy was able to take perfectly level aerial photos depicting urban and natural scenes. 

Within the collection, Gandy has several images capturing the history of the phosphate and fertilizer industries in Florida, including several phosphate plants, their construction, and their run-offs. The cover image for the exhibit is an aerial from the Piney Point site.

Gandy's keen interest in Florida's changing environment makes the collection a valuable resource for researchers interested in how population growth and climate change has impacted the state since the mid-twentieth century.

The collection primarily contains photographic negatives. The negatives are from the years 1970-2010, documenting Gandy's activities. A few of the prints were taken by his father, Sandy Gandy.

Jan Platt Collection

Janice Kaminis Platt was first elected as a Tampa City Council Member from 1974-1978 and subsequently elected to serve on the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, where she held office from 1978-1996, and again from 1998-2004. As an active County Commissioner, Platt fought to protect the environment, keep government honest, and advocate for balanced, managed growth. The Jan K. Platt papers contain extensive records from Commissioner Platt's activities in public office ranging from 1974 to her retirement in 2004. Select records in Platt’s collection pertain to the economics and ecological impacts of Florida’s phosphate industry, including Hillsborough County ordinances, environmental legislation, remediation efforts for impacted lands, and community and activist networks. 

Hampton Dunn Collections

Prominent Tampa journalist and historian Hampton Dunn did extensive research on the local environment, including the impact of industries like phosphate.

His extensive personal papers and fascinating Florida Postcards collections contain over 300 boxes of articles, research, photographs, and nearly 16,100 postcards that represent Florida's culture, environment and history.

Mentions of agriculture, phosphate, and Piney Point are all represented in the collections.

USF Libraries are home to a wealth of scholarship on Piney Point, phosphate, and related topics. A team of librarians and staff are working to curate these materials into a central discovery point to support research into these timely issues.

A curated bibliography of scholarly literature is in development.

USF Libraries have been tracking the local and national news coverage of the Piney Point disaster since April 2021. The bibliography is being stored for researcher reference in the USF institutional repository and updated on a monthly basis.

USF College of Marine Science Piney Point Research at the  Piney Point Environmental Monitoring Dashboard 

The  Florida Industrial and Phosphate Research Institute  @ Florida Polytechnic University

To learn about library hours and appointments to view the FLENH collection, please visit our FLENH Portal for more information.