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Study: Don't Use Florida Coasts As Toilets

Posted on: Thursday, 26 June 2008, 18:00 CDT

TALLAHASSEE -- Beach closures like the ones announced in Miami-Dade this week will continue throughout Florida as long as state and local governments continue to use the state's coastal waters as a toilet, concludes a two-year study of wastewater treatment facilities by the Clean Water Network.

The nonprofit environmental group reviewed wastewater treatment records at sewage plants along the Gulf Coast, from Pensacola to Key West, and found dozens of examples of failing pipes transporting raw sewage into ocean outfalls, treatment systems that are over-capacity, equipment failures, wastewater inadequately treated and expired permits.

The result is bacteria-laden beach water, red tide infestations, fish kills and toxic algae blooms that make swimming in the waters unsafe and sometimes harmful.

"It's not uncommon for people to be swimming right next to a sewage outfall pipe and not even realize it," said Linda Young, director of the Clean Water Network.

Young he said the unprecedented number of incidents of harmful algal blooms in the past few years can all "be linked to excessive nutrients and bacteria."

While not all of Florida's water problems originate from sewage plant discharges, she said, they are "a major contributor to polluted coastal waters."

Although the study, "The Gulf of Mexico -- Florida's Toilet," did not review Atlantic coast treatment systems, the authors of the study say they expect they would produce the same conclusions. "I would not expect to find any better or any worse," Young said.

Miami-Dade health officials on Wednesday issued a "don't-swim" advisory for 12 beaches in Miami-Dade County because water samples from the beaches deemed them unsafe. On Thursday, they lifted the advisory for 11 of those beaches, allowing swimming to resume on all but Crandon Beach.

The solution, the report concludes, is tighter enforcement of existing pollution laws, including adequate wastewater treatment, warnings to beach goers as to what caused the beach closings, investigations into the sources of fecal contamination, and bans on new development unless there is adequate sewage treatment.

Jack Rudloe, director of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Panacea, said the problem affects more than just beaches, it is affecting the food supply. Some shrimp hatcheries have been wiped out by toxins from the sewage and clam and oyster beds continue to be contaminated.

"It comes down to this: Don't poop where you eat," he said. "We have a Gulf of Mexico that has one of the richest seafood bodies and we're basically destroying it."

The problems result in large part to "years of lax enforcement," wastewater systems overburdened by growth and a failure to invest in the maintenance and replacement of sewage pipes and treatment, said Jerry Phillips, director of Florida Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Since 2001, the state has had a "traffic ticket mentality" to enforcing pollution violations in which violators are allowed to "pay to pollute." He said the current enforcement under Gov. Charlie Crist is no improvement: The number of civil penalties imposed on violators in the last year has dropped 62 percent.

Phillips noted, however, that half of the penalties levied by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have been against city and county governments and their wastewater operations.

"That says you've got a serious problem with your infrastructure at a time when you don't have the revenues to repair it," Phillips said.

When asked which is worse, oil drilling or the sewage contaminating our coastal waters and beaches, Young said: "This is 100 times worse because this is happening every day."

Source: The Miami Herald

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