The Institute’s enabling legislation also encouraged FIPR to make available to the public the results of its research programs so that the public would be better informed of the effects of phosphate mining in the state. FIPR responded by sponsoring the International Symposium on Phosphogypsum at Lake Buena Vista, Florida in November 1980 and sponsoring a Waste Clay Workshop with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council in March 1982.
This symposium, “Reclamation and the Phosphate Industry,” is the first time that the industry, its consultants, and its regulators have an opportunity to meet to exchange ideas specifically related to reclamation methodology and techniques. The symposium provides a forum to discuss approaches to reclamation that have not met expectations, techniques that show promise, and, perhaps most importantly, the directions in which research should proceed.
The contents of the Proceedings are organized in the same order as the symposium sessions: Keynote Address, Reclamation of Phosphatic Clay Disposal Areas, Reclamation of Wetlands, Reclamation of Native Upland Ecosystems, and a general section, Reclamation of Phosphate Mined Lands. Although most of the papers focus on the Florida phosphate deposits, the Proceedings include presentations dealing with phosphate operations in North Carolina and the western states; the selection committee felt that the symposium should give a voice to a diversity of approaches to reclamation in hopes of encouraging new ideas that perhaps had not previously been considered. With the exception of “Reclamation Alternatives for Waste Clay Disposal Areas’ by L. G. Bromwell and W. D. Carrier, III and ‘Hydrology of a Western Phosphate Mine: The Case of South Maybe Canyon,” by Richard Hawkins, Eugene Farmer, Patti Anderson, and Dan Kotansky of Utah State University, all of the papers delivered at the symposium are contained in the Proceedings. In addition, this volume contains thirteen papers that detail research that has been supported fully or in part by grants from the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research.
David J. Robertson, editor, Florida Institute of Phosphate Research. January 26-28, 1983.