Evaporation is being used to get rid of Piney Point’s nutrient-rich water

Depending on the time of the year, officials say the evaporation system can remove 200,000 gallons of water on a single day.

MANATEE COUNTY – For more than eight months, state and local leaders have been trying to find a way to shut down the former Piney Point phosphate mining facility once and for all.

After a partial tear in one of the facility's gypsum stacks in April caused more than 200 million gallons of untreated wastewater to be released into Tampa Bay, it became clear that a solution had to be found fast.

One of the many ways the state has decided to address the issue is treating the water that sits in the man-made reservoirs in order to store it inside a deep-injection well. Another way is by removing the polluted water, and that's where leaders have gotten creative.

Through the natural power of evaporation, officials tasked with closing Piney Point say they can remove hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater a day. According to Herbert Donica, the decision was made due to the limited window of time outside of Florida's rainy season.

In October, a judge named Donica the court-appointed receiver who would oversee Piney Point's closure. He says most of the efforts have gone to concentrating nutrients out of the water, but all that work is useless if rainfall causes the stacks to overflow.

MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — For more than eight months, state and local leaders have been trying to find a way to shut down the former Piney Point phosphate mining facility once and for all.

After a partial tear in one of the facility's gypsum stacks in April caused more than 200 million gallons of untreated wastewater to be released into Tampa Bay, it became clear that a solution had to be found fast.

One of the many ways the state has decided to address the issue is treating the water that sits in the man-made reservoirs in order to store it inside a deep-injection well. Another way is by removing the polluted water, and that's where leaders have gotten creative.

Through the natural power of evaporation, officials tasked with closing Piney Point say they can remove hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater a day. According to Herbert Donica, the decision was made due to the limited window of time outside of Florida's rainy season.

In October, a judge named Donica the court-appointed receiver who would