Scientists Determining Impact of Wastewater Spill

Environmental officials were trying to determine yesterday the potential ecological fallout after 41 million gallons of acidic wastewater was spilled by a fertilizer company into Florida’s Hillsborough Bay tributary as Hurricane Frances swept through the area.

It wasn't until midday Monday that Cargill Crop Nutrition, a unit of Cargill Inc., announced that water had stopped flowing through a reservoir breach that occurred during the storm Sunday.

Even then, with workers beginning to pump the overflow elsewhere on its property, Archie Creek continued to receive a discharge that local authorities said could amount to millions of additional gallons.

"It's a serious spill," company Vice President Gray Gordon said. "We're very upset about this, very concerned."

The environmental threat is to fish and other wildlife in and around Archie Creek and Hillsborough Bay, not to people, pets or livestock in the area. In Cargill's view, though, the spill was about as bad as it gets—an unexpected event that the company wasn't unable to contain.

An overflow ditch couldn't handle the spill, and for a while the company ran out of a caustic solution used to buffer acidity in the escaping wastewater.

Then, crews couldn't begin to make repairs because the lingering storm made work along the berm too risky.

What began as a 6-foot-wide gash, created by storm-driven waves in the reservoir at midday Sunday, grew quickly to 30 ft across and finally to 50 ft.

Source: AP