MANATEE COUNTY (SNN TV) – The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is set to renew Piney Point’s permit 22 years after it expired, a necessary step to close the fertilizer plant.
The agency issued a draft Clean Water Act permit for the property. Environmental advocates criticized the lack of a permit for years, long before the Piney Point breach that led to around 215 million gallons of polluted wastewater being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in 2021.
Its permit expired March of 2001, but the company that ran it closed in January 2001. HRK Holdings purchased Piney Point in 2006 but never used it for fertilizer production. It did use the plant for stormwater management under an order by the DEP.
The permit is required to finalize the closure of the facility, which could happen by December 2024 at the earliest, according to the Herald-Tribune.
