Channels around fertilizer waste impoundment

Bartow, Florida, USA

This waste liquid is from the processing of phosphate with sulphuric acid and is both radioactive and acidic. It was clearly mixing with surface water, thus groundwater. Chemical fertilizer is the catalyst that powers the modern industrial agricultural revolution, but estimates are that the supply of phosphate will be exhausted in 20 years or so. Also, petroleum based fertilizers deplete the nutrients from the soil, and the bodies of the people eating the harvest of that soil. Finally, the fertilizers erode from the point of application and work down through the water systems, creating dead zones in streams, lakes and oceans.

Phosphate provides one of the three macro nutrients needed by all plants to grow, and Florida provides the vast majority of the supply in the USA, at great cost to the local ecosystem.