Florida waters are getting more polluted. Here’s what the Times found

After hundreds of manatees starved in the Indian River Lagoon, the Tampa Bay Times decided to trace the crisis to its roots .That meant examining water quality across Florida .Manatees’ main food source — seagrass — was wiped out following decades of pollution in the Lagoon. Miles of once-lush seagrass beds transformed into underwater deserts. Manatees washed up dead and emaciated.Reporters spent more than a year reconstructing the die-off, diving deep into the causes of pollution and its devastating consequences. They analyzed more than four million testing results from waterways in every corner of Florida, taken over more than two decades.Here’s what they found :It’s not just the Indian River Lagoon. Nearly 1 in 4 waterways in the state are tainted by forms of nitrogen, phosphorus or other issues pointing to imbalances of the chemicals. The Times focused on examining pollution levels and trends in waters already considered contaminated by state regulators.More than half of tainted waterways that reporters analyzed either showed worsening levels of pollution or weren’t getting better over the last two decades.The worsening waters included places that are essential to wildlife and favorites among Floridians, like the Lagoon, tributaries to Old Tampa Bay and a slice of the Myakka River.Nearly three-quarters of springs reviewed by the Times showed rising nitrate-nitrite pollution over the last 25 years. They include beloved swimming holes and tourist attractions, which draw visitors from around the world.The Florida Department of Environmental Protection celebrates spending millions of dollars to curb contamination.Yet environmental regulators don’t typically set targets to reduce runoff pollution in waterways until chemicals exceed impairment levels. The state’s environmental agency said federal law guides its efforts, spelling out “reactionary” methods for restoring waters.The department develops goals and plans for reducing chemical loads — a drafting process that can take years. Florida hasn’t created cleanup targets for most impaired waterways, the Times found. That’s left more than 1,000 without such goals.Even where officials have stepped up efforts, more of the waterways have been getting dirtier instead of cleaner. They include places like the Lagoon, Suwannee River and Lake Okeechobee.Around some impaired waters, the state reports significant progress in curbing runoff. But the Times found the environment provides a different picture: Several segments have been getting dirtier, including in the Caloosahatchee River and Jackson Blue Spring.An estimated 1.9 million acres of natural land were converted into farms, roads, strip malls and subdivisions over the past four decades, a Times analysis of land use and property data showed. That’s more than Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties combined.Around the Indian River Lagoon alone, more than 30,000 acres were overhauled into lucrative properties such as housing developments, farms and golf courses during the same period.Development has destroyed wetlands that filter and trap contamination while also increasing pollution.Near damaged parts of the Lagoon, for example, home building has brought more than 100,000 septic systems, according to state estimates. Water contaminated from septic tanks flows through porous limestone and sand, eventually reaching springs or waterways like the Lagoon.Florida’s largest sources of water pollution — agriculture and development — aren’t held to strict limits on the nitrogen and phosphorus that flow off sprawling farms and city streets. Chemicals spew from fertilizer and waste, eventually reaching struggling waterways.Every year, an estimated 100 million pounds of nitrogen and 4.5 million pounds of phosphorus could mar already contaminated waters, from the Panhandle to Miami, the Times found.That includes more than 3 million pounds of nitrogen and 400,000 pounds of phosphorus around polluted parts of the Lagoon. Much of it comes from runoff.At high concentrations, the chemicals can fuel devastating algae blooms that kill fish and destroy seagrass beds, ruining habitats for manatees, turtles and dolphins.More than 89,000 acres of seagrass disappeared statewide over roughly a decade, the Times found, including from waters plagued by recent toxic red tide blooms such as Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor.The Times identified seagrass losses totaling more than 22,000 acres across Southwest Florida estuaries surrounded by cities from Clearwater to Fort Myers. They occurred between 2014 and 2022, spoiling nurseries for fish and grazing grounds for manatees, including in Tampa and Sarasota bays.North Florida saw losses, too. In the rural Big Bend, where the Suwannee River spills into the Gulf of Mexico, state scientists reported that more than 32,000 acres of seagrass disappeared over a similar period.But nowhere were the losses as dramatic as the Indian River Lagoon.More than 60,000 acres of seagrass vanished there between 2007 and 2021, or three-quarters of the previous footprint. Ultimately, estimates suggest, as much as 98% of the seagrass that manatees could have grazed upon was gone.In 2021 alone, more than 1,000 manatees died in Florida — by far the deadliest year on record for the animals.Many died from hunger, according to the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Others may have grown weak before dying of cold stress or being hit by boats.Wildlife officials resorted to tossing thousands of pounds of lettuce into the Lagoon to help survivors.Along the Atlantic Coast, more than 140 ailing manatees were rescued from the beginning of the die-off until late spring 2023. At least half were believed to be starving, and more than 30 were calves. Some were found with bones showing through their wrinkled skin.They were rushed to rehab centers across the state, where they spent months or years in recovery.The Times reviewed more than 7,000 emails from staffers within the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission around the time of the starvation die-off.The scientists had feared the worst before it happened. In 2019, three researchers from the agency contributed to a letter in the journal Science, warning that the Lagoon was deteriorating. They wrote that decades of regulation and restoration attempts hadn’t kept it safe from pollution. Seagrass was declining, and manatees were among the many animals at risk.As the extent of the die-off grew clear, researchers called the Lagoon an “estuary in crisis.”In the emails, one researcher said the state wildlife agency should be “notifying the world that we have a 5-alarm fire here.” He complained about “conservation by crisis.”“Like a slow-moving hurricane, we’ve watched this catastrophe slowly develop over the past decade,” the researcher wrote.A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee was similarly blunt in a draft memo, calling the die-off the “consequence of a human-caused degradation.”Pollution levels in the Indian River Lagoon remain too high.Still, state officials said conditions in the waterway have started to improve. The area has gone a few years without major algae blooms, which could be a period of good luck following years of bad. Seagrass has returned in some places — but not most. Scientists are no longer feeding manatees lettuce or seeing the animals starve.Experts warn that it would be naive to declare victory. The Lagoon has seen periods of recovery without algae outbreaks before, only to experience another bad bloom and backslide once more.

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Florida waters are getting more polluted. Here’s what the Times found

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Florida waters are getting more polluted. Here’s what the Times found

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