Florida’s highways have frequently been built on a foundation of chicanery and political foolishness. //

now we may soon see Florida roads that are built on something new: radioactive waste from phosphate mines.

When phosphate companies turn their mined rock into fertilizer, they produce about five tons of phosphogypsum waste to every ton of fertilizer. Since 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned using that phosphogypsum waste for construction projects or anything else because it exceeds the level of radioactivity regarded as safe for humans.