Tell EPA to Regulate Radioactive Gypsum Stacks
Help us protect our communities from radioactive waste!
Radioactive waste called phosphogypsum is created when fertilizer is produced by strip-mining phosphate rock from mineral deposits. It is stored in giant "stacks" that can be over a mile wide and 200 feet tall, and can store up to nearly a billion tons of radioactive process water. There are now over 70 of these looming monstrosities scattered throughout Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
This radioactive waste cannot be contained as currently managed, as evident from numerous documented cases of groundwater contamination, sinkholes, and leaks from these stacks.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has acknowledged the need for a federal regulatory program addressing phosphogypsum for over three decades now but has failed to act beyond its 1989 rule requiring that phosphogypsum be placed in "stacks."
The EPA needs to hear from all of us. Please take action and urge the EPA to increase federal oversight over these stacks to ensure the safe treatment, storage and disposal of phosphogypsum and the process wastewater.
Check out this short video and learn more at the Phosphogypsum Free America website.
