BONITA NEWS
April 15, 2007-04-17
Water concerns abound throughout Southwest Florida
http://www.bonitanews.com/news/2007/apr/15/water_concerns_abound_throughout_southwest_florida/
By Brad
Kane
The water in Southwest Florida
is in danger, and action needs to be taken to reverse troublesome trends of the
past decade. This is what about 75 people learned Sunday afternoon in Fort
Myers as the League of Women Voters of Lee County held
a seminar sponsored by various environmental groups. "We're surrounded by
water, and we've got to take care of it," said Laura Miller, league
natural resources committee chairwoman. "Natural resources are an im portant consideration of the
league."
Attendees Sunday learned about Lake
Okeechobee pollution, algal blooms and red tide, protecting
groundwater and a proposed Florida Power and Light coal plant on Lake
Okeechobee. "To me, that is what today is all about, all of
you getting involved and participating," said Susan Glickman
of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who spoke on the coal plant.
Jack Rose of Fort Myers
attended the event because he's seen firsthand the negative impacts on water in
the area. The creek near his home is drying up. When he used to live on Sanibel
Island, he said the effects of red tide were unbearable. "The
last couple of years, it has just been terrible with the red tide," Rose
said. "You get up there some times, and you can't breathe."
Ron and Jan Davis of Fort
Myers were just trying to find out more about the
environment and the causes of problems in Southwest Florida.
"You can't make any good decisions on anything unless you have good
facts," Ron Davis said. "This is first-person information.(The presenters) have a real interest in what they are
doing."
The couple regularly visits the
Florida Keys and like to snorkel and scuba dive. They noticed the
negative affects of water quality on the reefs and the wildlife. "We can
see the steady deterioration over all these years," Ron Davis said.
The source of red tide is a neurotoxin called brevetoxin, which a specific kind of algae gives off, said
Dr. Larry Brand of the University of Miami.
Although naturally occurring, that type of algae is made larger by the algal
blooms caused by when nutrients pollute the water supply. "Human
activities generate a lot of nutrients," Brand said. "Phosphorus is
going to cause your major problems."
Phosphorus is the main pollutant coming from Lake
Okeechobee, which feeds into Caloosahatchee
River. The majority comes from the
watershed area north of the lake, which is home to many sugar farmers as well
as other agricultural uses. "We've been polluting Lake
Okeechobee in record levels for the past decade," said Dr. Paul
Gray, of the Audubon of Florida.
A little more than half the water pollution in
the Caloosahatchee River
estuary comes from Lake Okeechobee. It is pos sible to reduce the water flow and water pollution to Southwest
Florida, but more work has to be done. "We've got to catch
more water, we've got to treat it, and we've got to move it southward in an
orderly direction," Gray said.
Greg Rawl, a
hydrologist and governmental consultant, said the public water supply in Southwest
Florida, which comes from underground aquifers and groundwater,
has experienced a great decrease in the past decade. The losses coincide with
the rapid growth the area has experienced over the past decade or so. Part of
the problem is mining operations in Southwest Florida, Rawl said.
The proposed FPL coal plant on Lake
Okeechobee will not help the environment at all, and people of the
area need to persuade the state government not to approve it, Glickman said. The cost of coal and setting up a coal plant
— including financial, environmental and medical implications — don't make it a
worthwhile pursuit over alternative power plants, she said. "We know how
to make clean electricity, and we know how to make clean cars," Glickman said. "It is just a matter of moving away
from the old way of doing things."