An industrial cesspool in Tampa Bay, Florida, United States, has leaked for days and is at risk of collapse. On the 5th, local operators increased their pumping efforts. Local residents are worried about the pollution of the surrounding environment and drinking water.
On the 5th, the operators are still pumping water, hoping to avoid the collapse of the wall of the cesspool. Scott Hopps, an official in Manatee County, Florida, said on the same day that they had increased their pumping equipment, and by the evening of the 5th, the daily pumping capacity had increased to about 280,000 cubic meters to 380,000 cubic meters. It is expected that about 1.82 million cubic meters of sewage will still exist in the sink.
Residents nearby are worried about drinking water being polluted.
The governor of Florida had previously warned that Manatee County would face catastrophic flooding if the cesspool collapsed.
Although local officials said that the cesspool leak would not affect the drinking water of nearby residents, because the drinking water came from Manati Lake. But some nearby residents said that their drinking water came from groundwater, and they were worried that sewage leakage would infiltrate harmful substances into groundwater.
The cesspool is located in the mining area. There were signs of leakage in March, and the amount of water leaked sharply increased on April 2. The sewage stored in the pond contains a large amount of phosphorus, nitrogen and other substances, if it flows into the waters of Tampa Bay or causes red tide disasters. Near the pond, there are industrial waste phosphogypsum, which contains a variety of radioactive substances and toxic heavy metals.
A state of emergency has been imposed in the area of the accident on the 3rd, and hundreds of households have been transferred and resettled. Environmentalists pointed out that this cesspool is not the first time that it has gone wrong. There have been several dangerous situations in the past decades. This confirms the failure of regulation at all levels of government in the United States.
