BONITA NEWS
April 15, 2007-04-17

 

Water concerns abound throughout Southwest Florida

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."