Thread by @Matt_Fleming321

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1/ Phosphate mining in Florida is a huge problem. Radioactive roads, fish kills, toxic mountains, cancer, and sinkholes...think #PineyPoint. There is ONE major company responsible for almost all of it, which is Mosaic, HQ'd in Tampa.

2/ Phosphate mining is how chemical fertilizer is mass-produced. It involves strip mining the surface of the land, and creating gigantic toxic waste piles called "gyp stacks".

wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/environment/20…

3/ This time lapse video shows the scale of phosphate mining in Florida's "bone valley" over the last 40 years.

4/ #PineyPoint was a massive ecological disaster, and there has never been any evidence rendered to the public that it WAS leaking, and not just full and needing to be drained. The "gyp stacks" are these mountains of toxic waste filled with toxic water.

link.medium.com/bwpC6q4WvAb

5/ A few years before #PineyPoint, another one of these stacks had a sink hole open underneath it...and then they filled it up again.

H/t @craigtimes
tampabay.com/news/environme…

6/ Radioactive? Yes.

"The waste that is left behind is called phosphogypsum. Most of the naturally-occurring uranium, thorium and radium found in phosphate rock ends up in this waste."

epa.gov/radtown/radioa…

7/ So what happens during a hurricane? They drain them.

Seriously.

The #PeaceRiver, #MyakkaRiver, and #CharlotteHarbor are where these stacks drained their waste to during #HurricaneIan.

8/ Charlotte Harbour is one of the largest and most bio-diverse estuaries in North America. To call it a national treasure is accurate. To call it a sewer for phosphate mining and sugar farming is also accurate.

9/ After the #PineyPoint disaster/deliberate planned draining, the state realized it had to do something differently, bc pictures and videos of massive fish kills rightly get national attention. Solution #1: pump the toxic water into the ground.

sarasotamagazine.com/news-and-profi…

10/ That's bad, bc also under ground is the Florida Aquifer. What is the #FloridaAquifer? For starters, its where about 20 million people get their drinking water.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floridan_…

11/ The solution to the radioactive mountains of crushed rock and sand? Build roads with it. Luckily the EPA currently bans this.

"The Republican-dominated Florida Legislature approved the measure by a wide margin."

npr.org/2023/05/09/117…

12/ But briefly, before a lawsuit was filed, that rule was overturned by the Trump admin. You can imagine what a DeSantis admin would do...

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…

13/ "Bioaccumulation" happens up the food chain. As radionucleides/toxins/metals are absorbed into plants and microorganisms, smaller fish eat, then larger fish eat, and at each step up the food chain, the toxicity and concentration increases.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumu…

14/ That Bioaccumulation is likely why so many whales are turning up dead along the eastern seaboard. At least, it's a much more plausible explanation than ship collisions or windmill cancer(🥴) from offshore windfarms.

https://twitter.com/Matt_Fleming321/status/1621197089379082240?t=HLirE12eQ-PAn5Vr1r5s-g

15/ Local communities have had little luck protecting their homes and environment...because of corruption.

"“I hope DeSoto County commissioners and residents recognize this workshop process for the meaningless dog and pony show that it is,”

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…

16/ Chemical fertilizer is one of the most ubiquitous and transformative innovations of the 20th century.

wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/environment/20…

17/ But the Mosaic funded lobbyists, and gerrymandered republican Florida Legislature are passing laws that limit fertilizer use even on lawns, even the tiniest little bit.

axios.com/local/tampa-ba…

18/ Who represents Mosaic? For starters, Holland and Knight, one of the biggest global lobbying outfits in FL...and they have done a fantastic job of scrubbing the internet of their connections to the fertilizer giant.

Because there's been a lot of cases.
flrules.elaws.us/courtorders/in…

19/ Just like Florida firm #BallardPartners was Trump's number one lobbying outfit, Holland and Knight is aggressively vying to be at the head of the table in a potential Ron DeSantis admin. Its alum include MANY bureaucrats and elected reps in FL.

reuters.com/legal/legalind…

One of their biggest success stories is State Democratic Party chair, Nikki Fried. Although she publicly claims she was unhappy as a corporate lawyer, she later worked as a Lobbyist for HCA, which is Rick Scott's infamous medicare fraud company.

She pocketed a million dollars from the pot industry she was supposed to be regulating as Agriculture Commissioner, and that ethics complaint was somehow dismissed by the FL Ethics Commission which is vice chaired by Matt Gaetz' dad, Don Gaetz.

/ Activists have fought Mosaic for decades with little to no success, and considering the bipartisan corruption, its easy to see why. But that hasn't stopped ppl from trying to protect unique and valuable public natural resources.

protectpeaceriver.org