#2021 RED TIDE FLORIDA MAP PLUS#

Yet, permits are still doled out to water users who pay pennies to make millions by drawing a natural resource for uses ranging from irrigation of crops to bottling for retail sale. We are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars to restore some of the larger magnitude springs. Over the years, however, we have found ways to drain, pollute and reduce their flows to the point where some are little more than just holes in the ground. They are a window to Florida's vast and critically important aquifer - the source of 90% of the state's drinking water. Some form rivers that flow to the Gulf of Mexico. Florida springsįlorida's nearly 900 natural springs pump hundreds of millions of gallons of clean freshwater out of the ground. No one wants this story line to continue, but the saddest part is the primary food source for many manatees - seagrasses located in coastal estuaries - still remains scant.Īn emergency supplemental feeding program has been launched, but is it at a scale large enough to help hundreds, or just a handful? This will be a story with a ton of interest within and beyond Florida's state boundaries. 10, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission - with many attributed to starvation. A record number of deaths occurred - 1,056 through Dec.

The cute, lovable manatee had a year to forget in 2021. View Gallery: Florida manatee crisis: Sea cows dying in near-record numbers Manatee deaths Most recently, a plan was approved to inject the toxic water more than 2,000 feet into the ground - the same place from where many Floridians draw their drinking water.

#2021 RED TIDE FLORIDA MAP PLUS#

In the last few months, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection filed suit to recuperate $46 million spent on emergency contracting services to mitigate the leak, plus over $1 million in fines levied since 2019 for improper management of the containment facility. Problem is, Piney Point's story is nowhere near its end. Were the two events linked by cause and effect? You can bet on it. Two month later, a massive red tide bloomed in Tampa Bay. Over 215 million gallons of contaminated water leaked from containment ponds into a Manatee County tributary that flowed into the southern end of Tampa Bay. In April 2021, the Piney Point phosphate mine began leaking toxic wastewater produced by the mining process. Yet for 100 years, we have allowed the destructive practice of phosphate mining - just to provide the mineral for fertilizers, detergents and other chemicals. Suncoast Waterkeeper founder Justin Bloom said that the effect of the Piney Point discharges on red tide was clear.View Gallery: Aerial photos of Piney Point retention pond wastewater leak in Florida Piney Point phosphate mineįlorida is a special place surrounded by water, filled by water and where its residents live, work and play on a giant bubble of water located deep under our feet. Last week, the Suncoast and Tampa Bay Waterkeepers hosted an event with the executive directors of the Sarasota Bay and Tampa Bay Estuary programs. Although we can’t definitively say that these things are linked, it does seem very likely that that had something to do with the bloom this year.” “Piney Point was another factor that unfortunately added a lot of nutrients. “Our messaging is consistent in saying that there are a number of different things that made this particular event as bad as it was and Piney Point didn’t cause the red tide this year,” says Hubbard. And scientists acknowledge that the Piney Point leak, which caused the release of 215 million gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay, has likely exacerbated the bloom. A number of factors have affected how the bloom has spread. Drought conditions caused water to have a particularly high salinity, which is conducive to algae growth. The bloom that has reached a fever pitch now in the Tampa Bay area was actually first spotted in December 2020 in Lee County, according to Hubbard.

2021 red tide florida map