Biden EPA approves project to build road in Florida out of phosphate industry's radioactive waste

After spending years talking a big game about improving the environment and public health, the Biden administration has evidently decided to end things on a radioactive note.

On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a request from Mosaic Fertilizer LLC, a major producer of phosphate fertilizer based in Tampa, to use phosphogypsum in a road construction project on private property in New Wales, Florida.

Phosphogypsum is a waste product generated by the phosphate industry when processing phosphate ore into the phosphoric acid used in fertilizer. This byproduct contains radium, which decays to form radon, an odorless and colorless radioactive gas linked to roughly 21,000 lung cancer deaths ever year, according to an EPA estimate. Under the Clean Air Act, phosphogypsum must be disposed of in engineered piles called stacks to limit public exposure.

A 2022 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Heliyon noted that phosphogypsum "stacked in the open severely damages soils, water systems, atmosphere and other environments. Radon-222 exhalation and hazardous gases containing phosphorus, cadmium and Radium-226 may have a negative impact on the atmosphere, releasing highly polluting substances and spreading pollutants to nearby areas."

The radon-226 found in phosphogypsum has a 1,600-year radioactive decay half-life.

A 2017 paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies indicated that world production of phosphogypsum annually exceeds 220 million tons. According to Florida Polytechnic University's Florida Industrial & Phosphate Research Institute, there are roughly 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum contained in 24 stacks in Florida and 30 million new tons generated each year.

In the face of increasing stockpiles of this waste product, there has been a decades-long push to consider recycling phosphogypsum instead of dumping it into the ocean or storing it in mines. Proposals to add the waste to road base fillers, modified bitumen, and asphalt concrete have been met in turn with heavy opposition.

Various conservation groups petitioned the EPA in early 2021, asking that it reverse its 1991 regulatory decision to exclude the radioactive waste from hazardous waste regulation under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recover Act; to "initiate the prioritization process for designation phosphogypsum and process wastewater as high priority substances for risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act"; and to consider whether the use of the material in road construction qualifies as a significant new use.

'The majority of comments were generally opposed to the use of phosphogypsum in public roads.'

The Trump EPA passed a rule in 2020 approving a request from the Fertilizer Institute to use the material for government road construction projects, but the Biden EPA withdrew the approval months after receiving the February petition.

Mosaic Fertilizer submitted its request for a "small-scale road pilot project on private land in Florida" in March 2022, then submitted a revised request last year, proposing the construction of four sections of radioactive waste road, 300 feet long and 24 feet wide, near the existing phosphogypsum stack in New Wales.

In October, the EPA gave the project pending approval, noting that its review "found that Mosaic's request [was] complete per the requirements of EPA's National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the potential radiological risks from conducting the pilot project meet the regulatory requirement that the project is at least as protective of public health as maintaining the phosphogypsum in a stack."

Joseph Goffman, EPA assistant administrator, notified Mosaic Fertilizer in a Dec. 20 letter that the project had officially been approved following an extended public comment period, stating that the risk assessment "is technically acceptable" and that none of the comments raised during the comment period contained "new information which would call into question the technical basis of the risk assessment for this pilot project."

The agency noted Monday in the Federal Register that "the majority of comments were generally opposed to the use of phosphogypsum in public roads, and critical of the current state of phosphogypsum management."

The entry noted further:

Commenters were critical of many aspects of the risk assessment. Commenters questioned the EPA's overall ability to perform radiological risk assessment, use of fatal radiogenic cancers as a health endpoint, selection of dose and risk coefficients, selection of models, and selection of exposure scenarios and whether current risk data was used. Specifically, several commenters believed that greater emphasis should be placed on the consideration of a future resident at the site of the pilot project. These comments represent disagreements with decisions that EPA has made in its evaluation of potential risks associated with the proposed pilot project.

The EPA ultimately conditioned the approval on the company notifying all workers involved in the project that "phosphogypsum contains elevated levels of naturally occurring radionuclides."

Ragan Whitlock, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has opposed the project, said in a statement obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, "The well-documented harm to public health and the environment from this kind of waste leaking out of radioactive phosphogypsum storage stacks should be leading to better oversight of Florida's biggest polluters."

"Instead the EPA has bowed to political pressure from the phosphate industry and paved the way for this dangerous waste to be used in roads all over the country," continued Whitlock. "We'll do everything in our power to protect Florida's people and precious environment from this reckless plan."

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