Florida residents slogged through flooded streets, gathered up scattered debris and assessed damage to their homes on Friday after Hurricane Milton smashed through coastal communities and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes.
We’re now in the period where you have fatalities that are preventable, DeSantis said. You have to make the proper decisions and know that there are hazards out there.
As of Friday night, the number of customers in Florida still without power had dropped to 1.9 million, according to poweroutage.us. St. Petersburg’s 260,000 residents were told to boil water before drinking, cooking or brushing their teeth, until at least Monday.
Also Friday, the owner of a major phosphate mine disclosed that pollution spilled into Tampa Bay during the hurricane.
The Mosaic Company said in a statement that heavy rains from the storm overwhelmed a collection system at its Riverview site, pushing excess water out of a manhole and into discharges that lead to the bay. The company said the leak was fixed Thursday.
Mosaic said the spill likely exceeded a 17,500-gallon minimum reporting standard, though it did not provide a figure for what the total volume might have been.
Calls and emails to Mosaic seeking additional information about Riverview and the company’s other Florida mines received no response, as did a voicemail left with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
The state has 25 such stacks containing more than 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum, a solid waste byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer mining industry that contains radium, which decays to form radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer. Phosphogypsum may also contain toxic heavy metals and other carcinogens, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel.
