Toxic Waste Ponds are Causing National Crisis

The New York Times wrote about how there are thousands of open-air waste ponds in America that are a risk to communities around them. There was recently an evacuation of homes near one of these ponds due to there being a possibility of contaminates making its way into this community in Florida’s drinking water. Theses open-air waste ponds are as large as a city block and hold byproducts of coal, animal excrement and radioactive “tailings”. These ponds are vital to many industries such as livestock and power generation, but they are starting to become hazardous due to poor maintenance and upkeep. Theses ponds have plastic lining to prevent the wastewater from seeping into ground water but there has been reports of rips in these linings. The ponds are also close to maximum capacity since production has been steady and the evaporation system that is commonly used is not able to keep up. There is also a lack of federal regulation on theses ponds, so the different ponds are regulated by state level policies making it less safe for these industries that use them.

These ponds consist of arsenic, lead, other heavy metals, and “Tailing” piles which come from phosphate mining. These come from the byproducts of coal usage, large scale farming and the formation of phosphoric acid used in fertilizers. These elements in the ponds are what cause them to be hazardous, especially with the climate change that is happening. Climate change is causing larger storms which in return is causing more water to be placed into these ponds which raises the possibility of them flooding and causing some real damage to the community and the environment. In the case of Florida, once the evacuation was cleared for people to go back to their homes there are still environmental effects. Due to the foreign nutrients that made it into the waterway from one of these waste ponds there will be harmful algae bloom which will lead to fish death affecting the ecosystem. In Florida this is where most of the “trailing” are concentrated but there are many more places that can be affected since there are 700 coal-ash ponds, countless animal excrement ponds and more “tailings” outside of Florida. These ponds were once seen as acceptable but now as industries keep growing to larger and larger scales there needs to be a better system in place to prevent these hazardous ponds from affecting communities and the environment.

There needs to be a better way to treat these ponds than what is in place now. The ponds have anaerobic bacteria in them which digest the some of the chemicals and animal waste and gives them a bubble gum pink hue. There is also an evaporation system to remove the water from the extra contaminants, but this system cannot keep up with the amount of production there is. There have been methods to treat the water of coal-ash ponds depending on the specific ponds and their requirements. There is an 8-step plan that treats the water from the waste pond to remove all contaminates in the water before discharging the clean water and disposing of the contaminants. This leads to the problem of what it costs to implement these systems affecting the company’s ability/desire to pay for this. There are also regulations in some states like North Carolina that are being put in place to help shut down these ponds by 2029 to prevent any more damage to the environments and human health. There needs to be more cost effective and safe way to help shut these ponds down for safety reasons and find an alternative use for these by products so we can start having a better affect on the environment.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/climate/florida-ponds-toxic-waste.html

https://www.saltworkstech.com/articles/coal-ash-pond-water-treatment-technology-options/