A year ago environmentalists to a man/woman were blaming Big Sugar for the lion's share of Indian River Lagoon pollution, pooh-poohing the devastating effect of human waste leaking from the land. Actually, many of them still are. But times have changed. Florida rivers and estuaries have come under greater scrutiny. Now, through more concentrated scientific study, we understand what a threat septic tanks and faulty sewage pipes are to the quality of our waterways.
Sadly, that was made patently clear Thursday when Brevard County was ordered to pay $4,100 in state civil penalties and investigation costs for two sewage overflows that wound up in the Indian River Lagoon.
According to a story in Florida Today, last February, the Barefoot Bay Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility in Brevard County had unauthorized discharges of partially treated and partially untreated wastewater, for a combined 1,786,000 unchlorinated gallons, that dumped into a canal feeding the St. Sebastian River, a tributary to the Indian River Lagoon.
That's a lot of toilet water, people.
The $4,100 isn't much of a penalty. Probably not enough to get much attention. And the overflows happened after heavy winter rains, when a flustered plant operator had to deal with clogged filters; he was rushing and released the wastewater into a pond dangerously near full.
Nevertheless, this is an important story because it comes along at just the right time, when the plight of the lagoon is attracting attention. It sheds a light on a fragile water system suffering fecal pollution at a greater rate than it can heal.
The evidence is all there, that's the frustrating thing. The "doing in" of the lagoon was caught red-handed in 2014, exposed in state data and reported in Florida Today.
According to Florida Department of Environmental Protection data, in 2014 alone, at least 25 million gallons of wastewater was released in the five-county lagoon region, from Volusia through Martin County.
We've said it before, but it bears repeating: Sewage in waterways poses immediate risks to humans because of bacteria and viruses. But the threat to marine life comes more from the nitrogen and phosphorous the sewage contains. Those "nutrients" can feed algae blooms that can kill off seagrass, which provides vital food and shelter to fish, crabs and other aquatic creatures.
The septic tanks along the lagoon are bad enough. But Brevard, among the first Florida counties to install central sewer systems wherever it could, has come a cropper now because many of the systems in operation are more than half a century old. Pipes are deteriorating in the ground. Whole neighborhoods a stone's throw from the Banana River, for example, are only just becoming aware that they are dispatching sewage directly into the groundwater.
Says the newspaper, pipe called Orangeburg -- wood pulp covered in coal tar -- links thousands of homes in Brevard to sewer systems. The pipe, used in new airfields and military bases during World War II, also filled the post-war demand for affordable piping when materials were scarce after the war.
Demand for the pipe boomed in the 1950s and 1960s, until PVC came along in the 1970s.
According to Brevard County property appraiser data, some 52,000 single-family homes were built between 1945 and 1975, when the pipe's use was widespread.
It's the Orangeburg pipe that has decomposed.
Cash-strapped cities like Palm Bay struggle to keep up with maintaining 105 lift stations and sewer pipes well past their prime, explains Florida Today. So the city takes a proactive stance: It conducts smoke tests to find leaks, then coats cracks with an epoxy resin pumped into the pipes.
Mishaps are frequent when there are so many old sewage plants that have neither the time nor the money to modernize as fast as they should.
The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 report card on the state of America's infrastructure -- released every four years -- gave Florida a "C" for sewage infrastructure, dropping from a B-minus.
The report said Florida has $19.6 billion in sewer infrastructure needs over the next 20 years. (If we got a "C" in 2013, think of how many foul rivers there are in America the Beautiful. It's frightening.
You would think the lagoon would be much cleaner than it is. During the 1990s the state banned discharging sewage directly into the waterways. What it didn't do, though, is provide a plan for replacing existing, outdated pipes in waterfront neighborhood after waterfront neighborhood.
More and more waterfront density, basic-maintenance failure among utility plants and septic tanks up and down the rest of the lagoon keep taking their toll.
Florida Today provided this from state DEP databases:
Volume estimate of sewage spills by lagoon-region county
- Brevard — 24,105,140 gallons
- St. Lucie — 1,222,000 gallons
- Martin — 220,100 gallons
- Volusia — 40,600 gallons
- Indian River — 38,112 gallons
Total: 25,625,952 gallons
The numbers you're seeing above are just spills -- the incidents plant operators can see with their own eyes and record. But consider the millions of gallons of unseen septic tank fallout. Consider the need to convert individual tanks to a modern system and the need to dredge muck out of the tributaries.
How do we start again? Can we start again?
Treasure Coast Newspapers is pushing for the state to appoint a "lagoon czar" to coordinate IRL cleanup efforts in all five counties. If the paper gets its way, will the new czar be successful in getting the Florida Legislature's attention? It will be a heavy lift. The resuscitation of the Indian River Lagoon will cost mightily.
The lagoon is worth all the effort we can muster. Look what it generates each year for the five counties:
- $3.7 billion in economic activity. That includes almost a $1 billion increase to property values for anyone who lives within 0.3 miles of the lagoon. Even property not on the lagoon benefits. And the lagoon is a huge draw, bringing in newcomers, bolstering property values throughout the region.
- 15,000 jobs created due to the lagoon-related activities such as boating and fishing, and $630 million in income.
- $1.3 billion in recreational expenditures on fishing, boating and other lagoon-related activities.
Florida Today has done good work here.
Keeping our waste out of the water. Why isn't that the top priority in all five IRL counties?
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
