Mosaic Uncle Sam Plant, Louisiana

The Uncle Sam facility was originally owned by Freeport Chemical Co., and then by IMC Global, when that company was merged with Cargill’s crop nutrition division to form Mosaic in 2004. Like other phosphate fertilizer production sites, the Uncle Sam plant has a phosphogypsum stack, more than a square mile in size, behind the plant. Together Mosaic’s gypstacks in Florida and Louisiana contain an estimated 60 billion pounds of hazardous waste, along with billions of gallons of acidic wastewater. With pressure from lawsuits, the EPA, and state governments, the company has recently agreed to develop a $2 billion fund to address the problem.