Stop Radioactive Roads in Florida

Clean water is paramount to both livelihoods and lifeways in Florida. Yet, the state’s historic pollution from failing wastewater and agricultural and urban runoff, devastating harmful algal blooms, and calamitous collapse of once vital marine and estuarine ecosystems persist. At a time when the state should be doubling down on measures to prevent pollution at the source and despite significant public opposition, Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB1191 into law in June 2023, allowing the use of phosphogypsum in road construction. Surfrider seeks to protect human and environmental health and prevent the use of this toxic substance in Florida roadways. 

Phosphogypsum is the radioactive waste created from the production of fertilizer. It releases cancer-causing radon gas and can also include heavy metals and carcinogens. The EPA currently prohibits the use of this toxic substance due to unacceptable risk it poses to public and environmental health, and requires that it is stored in 'gypstacks' which are prone to failure. 

This failure was never more clear than in 2021, when there was a leak in a containment wall at the Piney Point fertilizer plant in Manatee County, Florida. To prevent total failure, and triggering a local state of emergency, hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater from a gypstack in the plant were discharged into Tampa Bay. What ensued was a water quality emergency that exacerbated what would become one of the worst red tide events in 50 years and killed 1,600 tons of marine life. Surfrider’s Suncoast Chapter led the charge locally to call on the Governor and his administration to hold the fertilizer industry accountable for polluting Florida’s waterways and end the dirty practice of phosphate mining and fertilizer production in Florida. 

Using phosphogypsum in roads is sure to fuel radioactive stormwater runoff and irrevocably harm our waterways. To protect clean water and prevent further harm to Florida’s treasured marine environments, Surfrider is taking action alongside the Center for Biological Diversity to target the EPA to deny a request to use phosphogypsum in a pilot road project in Florida. Surfrider led a local and state elected official letter with more than 30 representatives from communities across Florida urging the EPA to deny Mosaic's current application. 

Surfrider is currently tracking the final determination by the Florida Department of Transportation regarding the suitability of phosphogypsum for road construction in Florida, and exploring potential federal legislation in collaboration with the Center for Biological Diversity to prevent the widespread use of phosphogypsum in roads.