Eight environmental and social justice groups along with one construction trade union group filed suit in December in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Coalition members include the Arcadia group, People for Protecting the Peace River. The Peace River, which supplies drinking water to Charlotte, DeSoto and Sarasota counties, runs near giant phosphogypsum stacks maintained by Mosaic Fertilizer.

Any road construction from phosphate waste is expected to have a greater impact on Florida because most of these roads would be within 200 miles of existing phosphate manufacturing facilities. Most of the world’s phosphate manufacturing and mining is in Central Florida.

Phosphate production concentrates low level radioactive isotopes or radium and uranium found naturally in phosphorus. In the 1980s, the EPA banned the use in road work. They calculated the risk of death for construction workers, drivers, bicyclists and home dwellers.

The EPA changed its mind, if not its official rules, in October after a year-long negotiation with The Fertilizer Institute, an industry-backed organization. TFI recalculated the odds of getting cancer from phosphogypsum exposure to be a lower level than what the EPA had calculated in the 1980s.