EPA reverses approval to use phosphogypsum for road construction

President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reversed the agency’s prior approval to add radioactive phosphogypsum wastes to materials used by government contractors to build roads.

The ruling concluded that the October approval in the waning days of the Trump administration "was premature,” reports NOLA.com.

The use of the gypsum wastes for road building had been requested by the Fertilizer Institute, a national trade organization for fertilizer manufacturing plants that are located mostly in Louisiana and Florida. According to the organization, manufacturing plants have long struggled to find alternative ways of disposing of the gypsum, a byproduct of their production.

EPA and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality officials said they were unaware of any actual requests since October by fertilizer companies to use the material for road building.

"To date, EPA has not received information or inquiries from any potential user indicating the desire to use phosphogypsum in road construction," said Enesta Jones, an EPA spokeswoman.

The reversal was formally announced by EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a Federal Register notice published July 7. Regan sent it to the trade organization in a June 30 letter, reports NOLA.com.

Louisiana and Florida have been leading producer of phosphogypsum, which is the waste left behind when phosphate rock is crushed and treated to create phosphoric acid for making fertilizer and other projects.

The waste is contaminated with small but measurable amounts of radium, uranium, thorium, radon and a number of toxic heavy metals. These contaminants require phosphoric acid manufacturers to store it indefinitely in mountainous piles near their plants.

As reported by NOLA.com, wastewater ponds built atop the piles have posed environmental threats to both natural resources and nearby residential areas in recent years.