‘Send the water south’: Mantra resonates at Everglades Coalition Conference
This time last year, Captain Daniel Andrews had never heard of the Everglades Coalition.
The Fort Myers native just knew that fishing wasn’t doing well. The seagrass beds and oyster reefs he had fished with his father were disappearing.
Now, a year later, the co-founder of nonprofit Captains for Clean Water found himself sitting on a panel at the 32nd Annual Everglades Coalition Conference, speaking about Florida’s water quality crisis. As a local businessman directly affected by poor water quality, Andrews has been educating himself over the last year to grasp what’s happening and what to do about it.
“We can’t just sprinkle seeds out there and grow sea grass,” he said. “We’re putting out future in jeopardy.”
Andrews was just one of a myriad of panelists and experts representing local, state and national agencies and organizations who attended the conference hosted by the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation, held Jan. 5-8 at the Sanibel Harbor Marriott Resort.
Despite the diversity, a common concern united the 300-some attendees: Florida’s water quality issues and how to solve them.
For one group of panelists, improving water quality is directly related to their livelihoods.
The conference assembled a “breakout session” in which representative from state and national anglers associations as well as marine industry leaders could discuss how Lake Okeechobee discharges are affecting fish in the Gulf and Atlantic.
“You’re not going to find much more passion than from the folks who are out there day in and day out,” said Ed Tamson of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, who moderated the panel.
According to data assembled by panelist Aaron Adams of the Bonefish Tarpon Trust, the fishing industry accounts of $7.6 billion in economic impact in Florida in a year. That number includes both tourists and visitors who travel to Florida for its status as the number one fishing state in the country but also from the local fishers and anglers who pay for licenses, permits and taxes.
Adams said that the releases from Lake Okeechobee are devastating to the ecosystems at the mouths of rivers – with or without the addition of toxic nutrients within the water. That’s because the natural mixing of fresh and salt water has been disturbed, and species such as sea grass beds and oyster reefs can’t survive in water with a too-low salinity level.
“If seagrass is exposed to freshwater for more than two weeks, it dies,” he said. “And then it’s replaced by algae. Same for oysters, and the organisms who depend on them.”
One problem in the ecosystem leads to another. Adams said the destruction of mangrove habitat and wetlands has affected fish populations, as fish in different stages need different habitats to grow.
“Our fisheries are under threat in a major way, and the Everglades is a threat on top of a bunch of other threats,” he said.
He called the problems with water quality a three-headed monster, with freshwater flows, nutrients and chemical pollutions all contributing to a domino effect.
“You don’t have to like fishing. You don’t have to be an angler, but fish are the umbrella species,” he said.
Andrews, who is 25, said he’s had clients that have been fishing in Florida since before he was born that can see a difference in a day on the water compared to 20 years ago, and he’s been losing clients, too.
“Once the water clears up, the beaches are full, but it takes a decade for sea grass to grow,” he said.
Anglers are the only one who feel the effects – it’s the commercial fishers, the recreational tourists, the bait and tackle shops, the boat sales industry – anything related to fishing will suffer, too.
Tamson compared the fight for clean water to his days in the 1960s when he and other activists were labeled “tree huggers” for trying to save the Redwood Forest.
“Now we’re doing that same thing here, and that grass-roots advocacy is important,” he said.
* Sending clean water south
One concept was agreed on by most. The best solution for water quality in Lake Okeechobee and the state’s three biggest estuaries was to treat the water and then send clean water south into the Everglades.
“The Army Corps of Engineers wants to be a part of this with the rest of you,” said Brigadier General David Turn of the Corps. “Let’s start in areas we agree on, and we all agree that sending clean water south is fundamental to restoring the Everglades.”
Water quality issues stemming from the man-made rerouting of water away from the Everglades and of freshwater released from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers has been a growing problem in the state for years.
However in 2016, the issues came to a head after intense rains in January and February pushed the Lake Okeechobee dam to a dangerous edge – it had already been in need of repair and could not handle the lake’s full capacity. The Army Corps of Engineers began releases of the water into the rivers
Fast forward a few months and Florida was making national headlines due to algal blooms and the presence of a toxic variety of cyanobacteria that was endangering human health on the east coast and creeping its way to the west coast. While Lee County never saw the extreme algal blooms of Martin County, it was included on Governor Rick Scott’s state of emergency list in 2016.
“There was an algae bloom visible from space,” said Marjorie Shropshire, a Martin County resident and a panelist at the conference.
She described the devastating effect the algae, which looked and smelled terrible, on the local tourism-driven economy of her county.
Both Friday morning panels discussed the current problems in Lake O and the estuaries and why just storing water in reservoirs around the lake is not a sustainable option. As the water collects, the toxic nutrients in it proliferate, which leads to the perfect algal bloom conditions.
“That’s the elephant in the room,” said Maggy Hurchalla, the moderator. “You keep piling the phosphorous up.”
Allen Stewart, a panelist and also an engineer and biologist, said that in order for balance to be restored and the waters move toward cleaner levels, the harmful nutrients must be removed, not just stored and accumulated in the water.
The main nutrient causing problems is phosphorous. Both Stewart and other panelists referred to stored phosphorous as legacy phosphorous, and it is inundating the “sludge” at the bottom of Lake Okeechobee.
Stewart said there was 110,000 tons of legacy phosphorus in Lake O today.
“Science has taken a back seat to institutional directives,” he said.
Dredging could remove the sludge from the bottom of the lake, Stewart said, but it’s expensive and of course doesn’t actually eliminate the phosphorous, because the sludge has to be hidden away elsewhere.
His suggestion is a natural method: aquatic plants that draw up nutrients from the water and soil.
It’s a method that is common practice in much smaller scale stormwater management systems – specific plant species are placed in stormwater retention ponds and swales to help clean the water before it can drain.
“Water plants are quite effective in nutrient uptake,” he said.
A similar project is underway to clean the Chesapeake Bay, and it has been successful.
He also said this kind of work should be coordinated with the private sector – it might save the state money and create an entire new agricultural industry of farming aquatic plants.
Panelists also discussed the criticisms that the Everglades Coalition has received. Judy Sanchez, the communications director for U.S. Sugar, said the Everglades Coalition members needed a “refresher course in basic reasoning and basic math” in an opinion editorial in the Palm Beach Post published Dec. 31. Others have called the group full of East Coast elites who want to keep their backyards pristine, said Maggy Hurchalla, a moderator and former Martin County Commissioner.
“Water is our life blood in Florida,” Shropshire said. “It doesn’t matter where it is, it all affects the Everglades and it should be one blood, not divided. We need to stand together.”