I’ve been working as a professional content writer, SEO copywriter, and communications manager for over 15 years. It wasn’t a chosen career path – it kind of happened by accident many years ago when I started doing some freelance writing. I had been working as an environmentalist before I became pregnant with my daughter but was having some health issues towards the end of the pregnancy. To help prevent boredom while I was stuck at home I picked up a few hobbies.
I decided to pitch some of my favorite magazines to write articles based on my favorite hobbies including beading, fused glass, cooking, and the history of herbs. I had a few pieces published in Beadwork, Jewelry Crafts, Lapidary Journal, BackHome, The Herb Quarterly, and the Farmer’s Almanac to name a few. Fast forward a few years later, when the bottom of the advertising market fell out for certain print publications, I started investigating writing for various online outlets. I occasionally mentioned my current content mill projects on my social media sites and one of my Facebook followers reached out to see if I was interested in helping him on a temporary basis.
My first official assignment as a communications and marketing consultant for hire was doing a bit of media outreach for a friend that was raising money for the Wounded Warriors Project. He planned a long-distance bike ride from the Washington, DC area back down to West Palm Beach, Florida. My job was to reach out to the local bike shops between DC and FL and ask if they or any of their customers wanted to ride with my friend on his daily rides. The ultimate goal was to attract the attention of local media outlets, raise awareness for Wounded Warriors, and help my friend raise additional funds for the organization. Shortly after this first part-time freelance assignment, I landed my first full-time, in-house position working as an SEO Copywriter for a local marketing agency. I’m not sure if I even knew what SEO (search engine optimized) copywriting meant back then.
Florida Environmentalist is Here to Save the World
Before I get into the Piney Point Reservoir Leak, let me spend a little time backtracking on how I got to Florida in the first place. My actual formal educational background was attending the University of Rochester (my hometown) where I obtained my BA degree in Geology. I moved to the Palm Beach County area in SE Florida in 1991, right after my 10th-year high school reunion in cold, snowy, blustery Lake Placid, NY. When I initially moved to Florida one of my first jobs was working as an Environmentalist for the Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM).
I actually worked in their wastewater division as an inspector of pollutant storage tanks (mostly aboveground and underground gasoline, petroleum, and chlorine tanks). DERM divided Palm Beach County into four sections so there were always four environmentalists on the payroll to cover the entire area. We rotated sections every three months so by the end of one year each environmentalist would have rotated through the entire county. After holding that position for just over two years I realized I wasn’t making a dent towards my goal of saving the world.
Cuban Mafia Rules Belle Glade
However; it was an interesting career while it lasted. I mainly inspected pollutant storage tanks at gas stations, municipal airports, highrise condos, and wastewater treatment facilities. When it was my turn to cover the northwest section of Palm Beach County I also got to inspect sugarcane farms. Without going into too much detail (the urban legend of the day was that the “Cuban Mafia” owned most of the gas stations in the Glades area) I quickly realized the big corporations had deeply lined pockets and many lawyers at their disposal while the mom and pop shops faced financial ruin if they were in violation of any environmental policies.
That tale is best left for another time or not at all (I don’t want to get whacked by the mob in the middle of the night). But here’s a quick summary of a typical gas station inspection. I would go inside the convenience store and introduce myself to the manager on duty. Then I would ask to inspect their records – they were supposed to monitor the tanks, pumps, etc. on a daily basis to ensure everything was shipshape, in good working order, and most importantly – not leaking.
After the paperwork inspection, I would go out to my county-issued work vehicle and grab my gear to inspect the exterior of the gas stations. I had two pieces of equipment at my disposal – a portable vapor detector and a groundwater collection tube. The groundwater monitoring wells look like miniature manhole covers. They are placed at various locations around the gas station with the majority dispersed around the underground gasoline and diesel tanks. When inspecting the groundwater monitoring wells there shouldn’t be any signs of gas or petroleum fumes when you opened up the cover. The gas leak detector checked for the presence of petroleum fumes that were undetectable by the human nose.
After using the vapor sniffer to check the well for fumes, I would place the tube down the well to collect a sample of water. There was a ball at the bottom which would float up as the water entered the tube. The theory was you should only be pulling up clean groundwater. Well, back in the day I can’t tell you how many tanks in the SW Palm Beach County Glades area were actually leaking gasoline and petroleum into the ground. Instead of pulling out clean water, I was pulling out tubes filled with a nasty water and petro mix.
I don’t remember the exact names and locations of the polluted gas stations in the Glades (this goes back to before my daughter was born so early to mid-90s) but after doing a bit of research, I discovered there was a petroleum company that filed for bankruptcy protection in 1991. They had 13+ gas stations in Pahokee, Belle Glade, and South Bay that were in violation of many DERM regulations – leaking gas tanks being one. According to a story printed in the June 12, 1991 edition of the Palm Beach Post, the owners of XXXX Petroleum, Inc. were both arrested and spent time in jail after they made multiple attempts (March 25, 1989 – July 1, 1989 – September 13, 1990) to blow up a rival gas station using gasoline and homemade dynamite timebombs. You can’t make this stuff up – I should write a screenplay for a possible TV pilot – LOL!
It actually got to the point where DERM wouldn’t let the environmentalists go out on their own when inspecting these gas stations – for safety reasons we had to start coordinating our inspection site visits with one of our supervisors. Eventually, the owners of the gas stations had to fix all violations which including pulling out the old leaking tanks, clean up the surrounding water and soil, and either put in new tanks or shutting down the stations entirely if the mess was really bad.
Just Say No to Phosphogymsum Stacks
You can check the ArcGIS Contamination Locator Map and see there are many petroleum cleanup sites still active in the Belle Glade, Pahokee, and South Bay, Florida region. Also, for sh@ts and giggles, you can check out the Registered Tanks from STCM (Storage Tank Contamination Monitoring) map and zoom in to view a specific area in Florida to get an idea of just how many pollutant storage tanks are out there – SCARY!
This finally gets me back to the original point of this post – the recent phosphogypsum stack leaks occurring in Piney Point – over in Manatee County on the west coast of Florida. Piney Point is in the Tampa Bay area, about a 3 1/2 to 4-hour drive from my house depending on the exact route you take. I love the Tampa Bay area – St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Safety Harbor – and a ton of other small to medium-size towns are all within minutes of the bay or the west coast beaches.
As a freelancer, I mostly work from home and pretty much set my own hours. Until recently I had been thinking of possibly relocating to the west coast of Florida and setting up shop over there. That was until a couple of days ago when my newsfeed started blowing up with stories about the imminent Piney Point wastewater leak. I was totally ignorant on just what the heck is a phosphogypsum stack anyways? I won’t get into the details – that’s beyond the scope of my blog and there are many, many, many news outlets covering the story.
The Piney Point Reservoir has a checkered past with multiple property owners and wastewater leaks and other violations going back many decades. This most recent leak was discovered around March 26 and a few days later Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a State of Emergency for the evacuation of the surrounding area. Initially, around 15 homes were ordered to evacuate but as the problem escalated, over 300 homes have been ordered to evacuate and roadblocks have been set up to prevent access to the affected area.
Right now officials have managed to partially control the leak, but if the reservoir fails there is the potential for around 600 million gallons of wastewater to flood the area within a matter of minutes. The wastewater sits on top of large phosphogypsum stacks – a by-product of fertilizer production – and unfortunately, this wastewater is slightly radioactive. The current solution is to pump out about 33 million gallons a day – but where is all this contaminated water going? Tampa Bay most likely and this could result in a TON of environmental problems such as fish kills, algae blooms, and hazardous red tide.
I hope a practical solution is found ASAP, so we avoid a major environmental disaster and the evacuated residents can return to their homes. But right now it’s not looking too promising.
Let’s Keep in Touch
Do you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share? Leave a comment on this post or shoot me an email: info@thecreativecottage.net and I just might feature your story in a future blog post.
Take care,
Lynn Smythe
Founder and Chief Blogger
The Creative Cottage
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