About 980 million litres of
contaminated water have leaked into Florida's main underground source of
drinking water, state officials say.
The leak occurred after a
huge sinkhole opened up under a phosphate fertiliser plant near Tampa,
damaging the stack where waste water was stored.
The water contained phosphogypsum, a slightly radioactive by-product from the production of fertiliser.
The phosphate company Mosaic said the leak posed no risk to the public.
It added the contaminated water had not reached private supplies and the firm was recovering it using pumps.
"Groundwater
moves very slowly," senior Mosaic official David Jellerson was quoted
as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
However, Jacki
Lopez, Florida director of the Center for Biological Diversity, told
Reuters news agency: "It's hard to trust them when they say 'Don't
worry,' when they've been keeping it secret for three weeks."
A spokeswoman for Florida's Department of Environmental Protection
said the company was updating state and federal agencies on the
situation.
Dee Ann Miller said her agency was doing frequent site visits to safeguard public health.
"While
monitoring to date indicates that the process water is being
successfully contained, groundwater monitoring will continue to ensure
there are no offsite or long-term effects," she said in an email to
Associated Press.
The sinkhole - about 45ft (14m) in diameter -
at Mosaic's New Wales facility in the town of Mulberry was discovered by
a company worker on 27 August.
The sinkhole later caused the waste pond to drain, and the contaminated water has now seeped into the aquifer.
Aquifers are massive underground systems of porous rocks that hold water.
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