Thanks to the September decision by U.S. District Judge, William Jung, HRK Holding, the owner of the Piney Point fertilizer processing site, was issued a default judgement citing the company for violating the Clean Water Act with its 2021 release of polluted water into Tampa Bay without a lawfully issued permit. The release dumped an estimated 215 million gallons of polluted wastewater holding nearly 200 tons of nitrogen into the Bay which helped fuel a deadly red tide bloom that spread from Hillsboro County down to the Suncoast dramatically impacting water quality and devastating sea life.
The release was particularly vexing because the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) had allowed HRK Holdings to operate without a lawfully issued Clean Water Act permit for more than twenty years. Finally, this past July, well after the spill, the FDEP agreed to fund the independent monitoring of the environmental impact of the release on Tampa Bay and agreed to improve the Clean Water Act permit for the Piney Point facility. The new permit was finalized on September 5th.
As quoted in the September 22nd edition of the Herald Tribune, Reagan Whitlock, attorney for the center For Biological Diversity, said “In my mind, the most important result in this case is that the court found the discharge of phosphogypsum and processed wastewater was unpermitted”. Hopefully, tougher requirements and penalties will help reduce other polluted releases in the future.