Climate Change – Page 5 – Clean Water Warrior

Lake Okeechobee … a thumbnail explanation for HAB crisis.

No doubt about it … Florida is in crisis-mode as it contends with the horrible side-effects of Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB). Unfortunately, the crisis was all to predictable, after nearly unprecedented torrential winter rains filled Lake Okeechobee to threateningly high levels — and resulted in mass-draining of the polluted (see: toxic) lake.

ABC News reported on July 4th that Florida’s Gold Coast is suffering from a nearly worst-ever tourist turnout. Hundreds of millions of tourist dollars have already been lost, and more economic fallout will follow.

As far back as 1999, concerns over phosphorus loading from agriculture were being presented by the State of Florida Environmental Protection Agency. In 2011, even more clarity regarding phosphorus runoff into Lake Okeechobee, largely from area agriculture, was brought to light:

Water quality in the lake has degraded over time due to high phosphorus loadings resulting from man-induced hydrologic and land use modifications over the past 60 years. The total phosphorus concentrations that currently exist in the lake are in excess of the amount needed for a healthy ecosystem. The in-lake total phosphorus concentrations have doubled over the last 50 years ….

With all the aforementioned heavy rain, in February, 2016, concerns over flooding resulted in the Army Corp of Engineers decision to drain Lake of Okeechobee at a rate of 70,000 gallons per second. And eventually all this dirty water flows to the tourist areas … bringing HABs with it.

A February 26, 2016 article by ThinkProgress.org was downright prophetic in predicting the “What Happens Next” stemming from this inevitable, if ill-fated, decision.

The simple fact is this: too many nutrients in water are a bad thing. They present a problem that spreads with runoff from land, which flows into waterways and then moves to other areas. Florida’s Gold Coast may be the latest, and most glaring example. But it is far from the only one.

South Florida HAB outbreak all too predictable

Less than two months ago, Clean Water Warrior (CWW) noted that the Florida Keys, and the fragile coral reef surrounding them, were always at risk from Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB). These blooms are largely caused by hot weather and, just as importantly or perhaps even more so, rain-induced nutrient runoff from agriculture and communities.

Today, as the Army Corp of Engineers drains water from Lake Okeech0bee — the result of unusually heavy rains from the 2016 rainy season (tied, of course, to global warming) – South Florida is in a full-blown HAB crisis.

This quote, taken from CNN’s excellent July 1, 2016 coverage of the HAB crisis, tells the grim tale as well as any:

Jordan Schwartz, owner of the Ohana Surf Shop, said he wanted to cry when he saw the green slime — a toxic algae bloom — covering his swath of Stuart Beach on Florida’s east coast.

“Animals are in distress, some are dying, the smell is horrible,” he told CNN on Friday. “You have to wear a mask in the marina and the river. It’s heartbreaking and there is no end in sight. The economic impact is devastating,” he said. “This town is 100% driven by tourism but the tourism is empty,” he said. “You go to the beach and it’s the height of summer and we have empty beaches, empty restaurants, empty hotels.”

The typical rogues gallery of offenders, which working in concert typically explain why HAB’s appear,

STuarts_FL-Docks_Algae — Algae-covered water at Stuart’s Central Marine boat docks

is again at work. Too much rain,creating too much runoff, flowing with too few natural or man-made restrictions into waterways that eventually pour too much phosphorus and nitrogen into slower moving waters, lakes, and, in this case, ocean shoreline.

Bottom line: the best chance of reducing HABs is to control what can be controlled. Rain? No. Man-made construction to re-route water, dam, or chemically alter? Maybe — but at an often exceedingly high price. Reduction of nutrients applied to land? Yes. Creating large land buffers to capture much more of the nutrients before they enter the waterways? Yes.

And it is with the last two solutions that Florida must start. Cooperation, not finger-pointing, is the key.

Hot, Hotter, Hottest – and here come the blooms.

I’ve been reading lately from sources such as the EPA and NRDC that climate change, in particular the heavy rains and hotter temperatures, is a primary contributor to the increase in toxic algae blooms seen around planet Earth. As I read, I was hoping to discover what percentage of blooms can be explained by hotter temperatures — and the correspondingly warmer waters that stimulate bloom activity.

Unfortunately, it appears that no matter how you try to slice the pie chart, hotter temperatures, more heavy rain, and drought — which I won’t touch on here — all work together to create a nasty cocktail upon which algae greedily gulps. Simply put, wherever Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB) exist, you’ll find at least two of the aforementioned conditions working together.

Which brings me to my point. In the terrific white paper Tides of Trouble from the NRDC website, the first “what to do” item proposed is to implement methods to control nutrient runoff from cities and farms, etc. Proven methods, I might add.

As I’ve said many times before, there is no one solution to the global problem of HAB in waterways. But, wherever HAB’s do exist, controlling nutrient run-off is often cited as the most effective first line of defense.