What we learned from the Indian River Lagoon
MERRITT ISLAND — The “perfect storm” began here, in the shallow waters that surround NASA’s premier launch pads.
Extreme cold, drought and decades of pollution enabled a tiny algae to explode with cataclysmic consequences in the Indian River Lagoon.
Scientists first discovered the algae in the Banana River after heavy rains in March 2011. The plankton soon enveloped Merritt Island and spread beyond what biologists had ever seen, stretching 70 miles south to Melbourne.
They dubbed it a “superbloom.”
It was unprecedented. The bloom would nearly wipe out the lagoon’s seagrass, ultimately killing a combined 73 square miles of the vital bottom plant — the linchpin of the marine food web. Other casualties included hundreds of manatees, pelicans and dolphins.
Now an army of scientists, conservationists and volunteers are racing to restore the lagoon, a $3.7 billion annual economic engine, and to figure out what went wrong.
What began as a perfect storm defies perfect solutions, they say. The answers, like the problems, are complex. There’s no one smoking gun, but a cumulative shotgun-blast of impacts from 1.7 million people who live in the five main counties along the lagoon — one of the most biologically diverse estuaries in North America.
Biologists say the lagoon can be rescued.
They point to multiple efforts, including dredges, oysters, volunteers, tax dollars, but most of all — stewards.
Here’s what those who study and make their livings from the lagoon say must happen to heal the waterway.
Stormwater is the No. 1 problem
EAU GALLIE — The lagoon looked greenish-brown this hot August day at Eau Gallie Fishing Pier.
“That’s not the way it should be, and it’s been like this too much in recent years,” said John Windsor, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at Florida Institute of Technology. “It’s from the runoff from the mainland. It’s from development activity. It’s from the sewage runoff.”
Agricultural runoff and yard fertilizers contribute, too, said Windsor, who’s studied the lagoon for more than three decades.
By the mid 1990s, a state law phased out most sewer plant discharges into the lagoon, solving one of the estuaries biggest problems, or so scientists thought. But the lagoon failed to improve as much as they’d expected, Windsor said, and runoff was the reason. “That’s why we had to change our focus to stormwater,” he said.
Decades of farming and development more than doubled the land area that drains to the lagoon, via canals, ditches and stormwater pipes. Now heavy rains send excess fresh water that dilutes salt content below what marine life requires. Runoff also carries fertilizers that spur fish killing algae, toxic heavy metals, pollutants and sediments that block sunlight from reaching seagrass.
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So what's being done?
Brevard and other lagoon-area governments want more than $300 million in state money for lagoon cleanups next year. That includes $75 million to increase funding for competitive grants that pay for local projects that reduce pollution from stormwater runoff. They’re also asking for another $75 million to increase a state grant program that lessens water pollution from farms, using better water and fertilizer practices.
Studies show buying more conservation lands to buffer waterbodies from runoff is cheaper in the long term than new ponds, street sweeping and many other typical stormwater solutions.
A 2013 study of the Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland, found that when measured over 20 years, an acre of forest buffer costs about $88 per pound of nitrogen removed per year. By comparison, stormwater ponds can cost more than $1,000 per pound and street sweeping more than $6,000 per pound.
Conservationists are suing to force the state to use more money from taxes on real estate documents to buy green space, rather than for salaries, equipment and other uses.
First, the muck must go
MELBOURNE — From a dock at Melbourne Harbor Marina, John Trefry probes the lagoon’s deepest, darkest problem — a primary symptom of the estuary’s disease. He dips a small metal clam-shell grabber on a rope, lets it sink, closes the grabber and yanks up a dripping heap of black, viscous muck, which he likens to “black mayonnaise.”
“Oh, wow,” Trefry said, holding a handful of the oozing organic gunk up to his nose, as a rotten-egg smell permeates. “It’s really rich in hydrogen sulfide. Nobody wants to live in there but bacteria.”
Muck is the buildup of soils, rotted vegetation and clay that runs off yards and roads.
It’s a ticking time bomb of pent-up nitrogen, phosphorus and cloudiness stirred up with every storm, blocking sunlight that seagrass needs to grow.
“Nutrients are constantly coming up out of those sediments,” said Trefry, a geochemist with Florida Tech. “And so they really are a good overview of the problems we have in the lagoon, because they represent all the things that have washed into the lagoon over time that we the people have introduced to the lagoon.”
It took five decades for the estimated 5 million to 7 million cubic yards of muck to build up in the Brevard and Indian River County portion of the lagoon. That’s enough to cover a football field 1,000 yards high, Trefry said. Muck is 10 feet thick or more in some spots of the lagoon and its tributaries, such as Eau Gallie River in Melbourne.
Melbourne leaders don't think muck landfill will stink
So what’s being done?
A locally driven campaign to dredge out the muck culminated with Trefry outlining the problem to Florida legislators in 2013 at the state capital, handing out small plastic bags of muck.
The Legislature responded, allocating $46 million over the past two years to Brevard County for lagoon restoration, most of which will go toward muck dredging. That included $20 million toward dredging the Eau Gallie River, expected to begin in mid 2016 and to be completed by the end of 2017 or early 2018.
The project will remove up to 750,000 cubic yards of muck from the Eau Gallie River and its tributary, Elbow Creek.
Dredges will pump the watery muck to containment areas on public land, where it dries out and remains or is hauled off and used to cover trash heaps at landfills.
Brevard plans to ask the Legislature for more than $30 million for muck dredging, according to a county document of legislative priorities. Research is underway to identify and map the worst muck deposits in the lagoon.
Combined, Brevard’s five priority dredging projects will remove 1.4 million cubic yards, enough muck to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool 437 times.
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New inlets an answer?
VOLUSIA COUNTY — George Sweetman yanks up a metal trap from the Mosquito Lagoon and shakes loose a half dozen blue crabs. They claw the wire trap and each other as Sweetman dumps them into a wooden crate. A sole pelican splashes to a crash landing beside the boat, floating as it waits for jettisoned scraps of bait.
These waters Sweetman fishes — surrounding the Canaveral National Seashore and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge — are a baseline by which to gauge the health for the rest of the lagoon.
Some 140,000 acres of undeveloped land buffers rocket launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Usually, lush seagrass nearby fosters more sea trout, red fish, oyster larvae and other marine life that migrate into surrounding, more urbanized areas of the lagoon, increasing fish and crab populations there beyond what they otherwise would be.
Not so much anymore. Even the lagoon’s most pristine regions couldn’t withstand the algae onslaught of the past four years.
Sweetman, 70, of Cape Canaveral, witnessed a blue craB exodus as algae thickened and the crustaceans fled.
“They’re going to go where there’s more tide, more flow,” said Sweetman, from the helm of his crab boat. “That’s one of the reasons I don’t understand why the government don’t open up the (Canaveral) locks with all the pollution in that area of the river.”
That’s been tried before, with costly consequences. To reduce flooding during Tropical Storm Fay in 2008, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers left open the locks, which connect the Banana River to the Atlantic Ocean via Port Canaveral. The port’s main shipping channel filled with sand and had to be dredged.
So what's being done?
Florida Tech researchers are exploring ways to improve flushing of the lagoon via weirs, small inlets or culverts and pump systems.
At 72 miles long, Florida’s Space Coast encompasses almost half the lagoon’s length and 71 percent of its surface area. But Brevard lacks sufficient outflow into the Atlantic Ocean that other counties get from large inlets.
The main risk of new inlets with jetties is down-drift beach erosion that results in costly beach renourishment projects.
Recent research at Florida Tech showed that simply keeping the lock open wouldn’t do much to improve the lagoon. But small inlets or culverts along the most narrow strips of barrier island, coupled with pumping stations, seem to work best, the study found.
A pump or baffle system in the area of the port and Banana River Lagoon would be the more likely option for any future project to improve water quality near the port, scientists say. Another idea would be a weir, or low dam structure, at the port that lets the tides do all the work in cleansing the lagoon.
What about nudging nature along?
STUART — Vincent Encomio slogs knee deep near the mouth of St. Lucie River, where fish sometimes grow nasty lesions and high-bacteria counts often close the river to swimming.
This recent windy fall morning, Encomio, director of scientific research at the nonprofit Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart, is leading other researchers and volunteers to monitor oyster reefs at Flagler Park.
Algae blooms that killed more than half the lagoon’s seagrass in recent years only reached as far south as Fort Pierce. Here, another menace plagues the lagoon. In 2013, local urban runoff from heavy rains and large releases of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee sent huge pulses of nutrient-rich water into the St. Lucie River, which flows to the lagoon.
Excess fresh water reduces salt content in the lagoon to levels far below what seagrass, fish larvae and other marine life need to survive. In general, levels of about 2.5 percent salt are ideal for seagrass growth and fish larvae. Ocean water is around 3.5 percent salt.
So what’s being done?
State and federal agencies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to store Lake Okeechobee water in large reservoirs, instead of sending it to coastal waters east and west, and to mimic the natural north-south flow of the Everglades.
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Efforts to use oysters to help cleanse the lagoon in St. Lucie tie in with similar restorations in Brevard.
Volunteers in St. Lucie use oyster shells from local restaurants, seed them with baby oysters, put them in mesh bags, then place the bags in the lagoon.
Brevard County and Brevard Zoo officials hope the filter feeders can naturally restore water quality in the lagoon. Each adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons per day.
So far, more than 900 oyster gardening volunteers have helped to raise more than 180,000 oysters, building 60 sections of oyster reef and 15 control areas at reef sites in Port St. John, Melbourne Beach and Merritt Island.
In Brevard, volunteers also grow live oysters at their docks, to put later on pilot reefs throughout the county. They hope oyster larvae will settle out onto some hard surface, preferably other oysters, creating reefs.
Brevard wants $1.2 million from the state in 2016 to develop a “living shoreline” master plan, including $700,000 to build living shorelines of oysters and natural vegetation.
Seagrass transplants
PALM BAY — Lori Morris ducked underwater, reaching inside protective plastic cages to run strands of shoal grass through her fingers.
The water is so cloudy this July day that the thin blades of grass can’t be seen from the surface in water only a few feet deep.
“This was a gorgeous bed,” said Morris, a scientist with the St. Johns River Water Management District, in waist deep water.
Biologists run into a Catch-22 when trying to grow back seagrass. The plant needs clear water so that sunlight it requires to grow reaches the bottom. But without seagrass, more sediment stirs up from the bottom, clouding up the water and blocking sunlight.
So what’s being done?
A three-year, $110,000 experiment by the water management district has offered hints of hope that the lagoon’s seagrass can recover.
In still-barren spots where scientists transplanted seagrass from healthier areas of the lagoon, grass grew back, but often, not for long.
By 2013, seagrass acreage had grown back 12 percent since the 60 percent loss from the previous two year’s algae blooms, on average spreading 82 feet farther from shore. The seagrass beds maintained those gains through this past summer.
“So we’re kind of holding the line for now,” Morris said this month. “No big gains, but no big losses either.”
Wean off septic tanks
MERRITT ISLAND — On a recent day in the Banana River, between Merritt Island and Cocoa Beach, a pair of dolphins cut the water’s glassy surface. They’re herding mullet — a good sign.
Laura Herren, a biological scientist at FAU-Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, and FAU graduate student Alison Feibel are sampling the water and phytoplankton to search for the chemical hallmarks of human waste.
They find the markers of that waste here and at 19 other sites they test in the lagoon, but worse near Merritt Island than elsewhere.
The St. Sebastian River also delivers a heavy dose of nitrogen and phosphorus from septic tanks along the watershed, they say.
A FLORIDA TODAY analysis of city, county and state databases and recent scientific research found
67,000 to 95,000 septic tanks in Brevard. Thousands of those are more than 20 years old, the average lifespan of a septic tank. Most of Brevard’s oldest septic tanks are in the outskirts of Palm Bay, Port St. John, Merritt Island and other places lacking sewer lines, such as most of the homes south of Melbourne Beach.
Septic tanks contribute an estimated 2 million pounds or more of nitrogen per year to the lagoon.
Palm Bay is at the center of the problem, with 27,000 septic tanks. Almost 2,000 of the tanks fall within the city’s sewer service area, so those homeowners could get hooked up to sewer. But in most cases, cities can only force new homes to do so.
Sewer systems aren’t a cure-all. In many sewage spills, groundwater and sand infiltrate and clog old cracked pipes, leading to overflows elsewhere in the system. Or roots intrude. Saltier soils — especially beachside — tend to wear more on sewer pipes. Joints of older clay pipes pull apart.
So what’s being done?
Several counties are pursuing local and state money to ease the cost of hooking up to sewer.
Rockledge plans soon to use $775,000 from the Legislature to take 154 homes off septic tanks in one of the city’s oldest subdivisions, Breeze Swept, just off U.S. 1. The entire project will cost close to $2 million.
Martin County plans a more than $30 million project — assisted by state money — to convert more than 2,000 homes from septic tanks to sewer.
Volusia County is asking the state for $100,000 to eliminate septic tanks in the Oak Hill area along the Mosquito Lagoon and extend its sewer system.
St. Lucie County wants $4.75 million from the state next year to switch 578 septic tanks on Hutchinson Island to sanitary sewer.
And Brevard plans to spend $110 million over five years on sewerage improvements, including upgrades to sewer plants, replacing old pipe and making other improvements.
The county also plans to ask the Legislature for $1.7 million next year to identify critical areas of septic tank groundwater pollution. They’d use the money to launch a $2.3 million program to help homeowners pay to upgrade their septic systems to advanced aerobic treatment. The volunteer pilot program would pay half the cost to install upgraded systems, which can run up to $12,000. Some of the funding could also be used for repairing or extending sewer lines.
But it will take much more than new sewers, dredging and other government approaches, experts say. The long-term fixes fall mostly in our own backyards.
Contact Waymer at 321-242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com Follow him on Twitter@JWayEnviro and at facebook.com/jim.waymer
About “From the Water”
FLORIDA TODAY spent six months traveling the 156-mile estuary to tell the lagoon’s story from the water itself. We shadowed the scientists, conservationists and fishermen who know the waterway best. We slogged waist-deep with biologists in transplanted seagrass beds, tagged along with fishermen to bear witness to their dwindling catches, and even tasted the invasive lionfish gaining a foothold in the lagoon that activists hope our appetites can help keep in check.
What can you do?
Limit your fertilizer use and lawn and landscaping watering.
Keep storm drains clean.
Blow grass clippings back into the yard, instead of into the street. Don’t let any grass clippings or pet wastes get into the water.
Maintain a 10-foot “maintenance-free zone” from the water, where you don’t mow, fertilize or apply pesticides.
To prevent soil erosion, which contributes to muck buildup, follow Florida Friendly Yards landscaping guidelines.
Get you septic tank inspected every three to five years and consider hooking up to the sewer system if available.
Get involved. Volunteer to become an oyster gardener through Brevard Zoo’s oyster gardening program. For information, visit http://brevardoystergardens.org.
The Marine Resources Council also offers volunteer opportunities to help monitor lagoon water quality, plant native shoreline plants and remove invasive plants and trees. Contact them at 725-7775 or visit http://www.mrcirl.org.
The Florida Oceanographic Society also has a volunteer oyster restoration program in the St. Lucie area and southern lagoon. For information, call 772.225.0505 ext. 104 or email kgeorge@floridaocean.org.
C ontact your state legislators and push for stronger water quality policy and programs.
Report sick, dead or injured wildlife. Sick or dead birds or other wildlife should not be handled. Instead, report them by calling the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) Wildlife Alert Hotline at (888) 404−3922 or visiting the FWC website. Entangled, injured or dead manatees can be reported by sending a text to Tip@MyFWC.com.
Source: FLORIDA TODAY research; For information, go here.
Why care?
•The Indian River Lagoon generates $3.7 billion in economic activity annually, including almost a $1 billion annual increase to property values for anyone who lives within 0.3 miles of the lagoon. Even property not on the lagoon benefits. The lagoon is a major draw for newcomers moving here, helping to bolster property values throughout the region.
•The lagoon contributes $47 billion to the property values in the five counties along the estuary. This impact is 22 percent of the market value of all property in the area.
Source: Indian River Lagoon Economic Assessment and Analysis Update, Hazen and Sawyer
Meet environment reporter Jim Waymer, executive editor Bob Gabordi and publisher Jeff Kiel from noon to 3 p.m. today, at Kiwanis Island Park, 951 Kiwanis Island Park Road, Merritt Island. This Brevard: Next will shine a spotlight on FLORIDA TODAY’s 30-minute “From the Water” documentary on the Indian River Lagoon. It will air at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 13, 8 p.m. Dec. 14 and 10:30 p.m. Dec. 16 on WEFS-TV.
The event is free and family-friendly. We will have two food trucks there – Taco City and Kona Shaved Ice – as well as live music from the Hemingways (featuring our news columnist John Torres). Kids can look forward to a visit from the Parkchester Santa, too. Our FLORIDA TODAY photographers will take free photos of Santa and the kids.
Please register for your free tickets at this link: http://on.flatoday.com/kiwanis