One more confirmation that objective water scientists got it right. One more reason that our state should start fixing our water problems in earnest instead of dancing around trying to find “make work” to appear to be earning their pay.
Even our DEP knows what is wrong and what is causing our state to lose billions of dollars in tourism, but they pretend to need “studies” and to try this and that “new technology” to stay busy. Attacking the sources will necessitate a radical change in agriculture to make it sustainable. This would be unpopular and ruin political careers.
Read the original article here at Naples Florida Weekly.
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
That humans provide fuel for red tides that makes the smelly fish-killing events stronger and last longer has long been anecdotal. Now, researchers looking at Southwest Florida have explained that the correlation exists.
Environmental researchers led by the University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions documented the link after studying a decade of red tide data from the Caloosahatchee River, Charlotte Harbor, and the surrounding watersheds including the coasts of Charlotte and Lee counties. The findings are published in the June issue of Science of the Total Environment, which is a peer-reviewed journal….
“There has been an assumption that nutrient runoff from agriculture, fertilizer, and septic systems are used by the dinoflagellate that causes red tide blooms,” Eric Milbrandt, SCCF’s marine lab director said. “There is now another piece of evidence linking red tide bloom intensity to these human activities and nitrogen sources specifically.”
The association provided a glimpse into how the researchers linked nitrogen inputs, both inland and coastal sections of the watershed, to eventual red tide intensity.
They started their analysis at the Kissimmee River, many sections of which had been dug into a straightened waterway in the 1900s during misguided efforts to control water coming from the growing Orlando suburbs. Water bound for the River of Grass flows next into Lake Okeechobee, which has been polluted by fertilizer runoff from development south of Orlando and large agricultural operations around the lake. The study’s authors then researched the flow from the big lake into the Caloosahatchee through a river-leveling series of locks starting in Moore Haven. That route concentrates the bad nutrients in the water to a level that consistently fed the naturally occurring blooms along the Southwest Florida coast, the study found.
“This study confirms that nitrogen loads can in fact make red tide last longer,” Christine Angelini, director of the Center for Coastal Solutions, told SCCF. “However, it is important not to jump to conclusions and immediately assign ‘blame’ for red tide events to a particular land use because other factors play a role as to the level of impact human activity will have.” ¦
