Hats off to WUFT News for this series about our water quality. “Shining Example” is heartbreaking and frustrating as it exposes the recent decline in water quality in Tampa Bay. After suffering excessive pollution in the last half of the Twentieth Century, it had been cleaned up and the water quality was said to have been equal to the 1950s. Tampa Bay was one of the very few examples of what could be done to help our imperiled waters. What was victory is now not so much.
Sadly now due in part to our DEP incompetence, wastewater spills (unproportionally in Pinellas County) and other sources, we are fast approaching the pollution of the 1960s and ’70s.
Our DEP continues today to sponsor toxic wastewater dumps by the millions of gallons from Piney Point because they are unable to manage this phosphate industry.
“Red Handed” is equally frustrating because it so unnecessary and we have our own deniers by agencies who know better. Politics invade everywhere.
Read about the series here at Watershed.
Thanks to Bill Basta for this link.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Special project: Watershed
• Today WUFT News launches WATERSHED, an investigation into statewide water quality marking the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act and Florida Water Resources Act of 1972. Funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative, University of Florida journalism fellows reported on the state’s waters half a century after those sweeping laws. What progress can the state celebrate, and what waters are still ailing, or worsening amid climate change, pollution and outdated infrastructure? What bold actions are possible now?
Our series opens with “Shining Example.” After decades of pollution suffocated Tampa Bay and killed half its seagrass and much of its marine life, unprecedented political cooperation and hundreds of science-guided projects brought the estuary back to life. Tampa Bay became a symbol for the success of the Clean Water Act, and humanity’s ability to clean up pollution. But today, seagrasses and fishes have begun to die again. The Bay is losing ground — again a symbol, this time of declining water quality after a half-century of gains.
Be sure to also check out the story “Red-Handed.” New research finds that human pollution influences the severity of red tides more directly than scientists previously understood. The connection sheds light on the need for better water-quality monitoring statewide — and ultimately, to reduce the nutrient pollution flowing into Florida’s waterways.
