It is not often that Florida and the Biden administration are in harmony on a policy.
One decision by the federal government caught everyone by surprise.
And Florida is building one scary project with Biden’s EPA approval that had Democrats fuming.
Florida gets approval to use radioactive waste to build roads
Engineers are always looking for creative ways to make use of waste or byproducts for something constructive.
Mosaic Fertilizer L.L.C. came up with a plan to build a road out of the radioactive compound phosphogypsum.
Phosphogypsum is one of the waste products left behind when phosphate rock is made into fertilizer and found in the runoff from mining.
Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shocked and angered environmental groups when they signed off on Mosaic’s plan for a pilot project to build a road using phosphogypsum.
Trump’s EPA signed off its use in roads, but the ruling was overturned after President Joe Biden took office.
The company will experiment with phosphogypsum in four different mixtures of material to build the road.
Mosaic will build the sections of road on a facility in Polk County, Florida that is not open to the public.
The EPA argued that the pilot program met the standards set under the Clean Air Act.
“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,” the EPA stated.
Phosphogypsum has weak levels of radioactivity.
Mosaic would need permission to expand the project behind the pilot program.
“The EPA’s approval applies only to the proposed pilot project and not any broader use,” the EPA wrote. “Any other use would require a separate application, risk assessment, and approval.”
Environmentalists outrage at Biden’s EPA over Florida’s radioactive road experiment
Critics argue that phosphogypsum creates a risk for workers who use it during road construction and for future homes that might be built over the road.
Center for Biological Diversity attorney Ragan Whitlock called the EPA’s decision to give it the green light “mind-boggling.”
“That dramatically increases the potential for harm to our road crews and water quality,” Whitlock said. “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.”
EPA officials concluded that the pilot project was minimal risk despite the opposition to it.
“Results from multiple modeling efforts indicate that risks due to the proposed pilot project are low,” the EPA claimed. “Members of the public are not expected to come into contact with the phosphogypsum in the test road.”
A 2023 law in Florida authorized the study of phosphogypsum in road construction.
Florida is the top producer of phosphogypsum in the country and it typically sits in large stacks.
The frequency of devastating storms in Florida means that the stacks could pose a risk to the public.
Coming up with a safe way to use it for constructive purposes like road construction would be a preferable outcome to leaving it sitting outside.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this story.
