An edition of: WaterAtlas.orgPresented By: Sarasota County, USF Water Institute

Water-Related News

Director’s Note: Is it safe to go into the water?

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From Sarasota Bay Estuary Program Director Dave Tomasko:

It’s been almost three weeks since our watershed was impacted by Hurricane Milton, which was itself about two weeks after we were impacted by Hurricane Helene, which came on the heels of impacts from Hurricane Debby - which was itself preceded by the impacts of Invest 90L – which gave us the highest hourly rainfall amount in over 50 years. So, record-setting rainfall, record-setting storm surge, and hurricane-level winds have all impacted our neighborhoods and bays over the past few months. I consider myself lucky, in that the storm surge from Helene came up to my garage, but not in it. After Milton, I got my power back in just over a week, I was able to save my AC unit (which got blown off a three-foot stand) and I’m only looking at a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of damage to my house. Take a drive through Siesta Key, St. Armands Circle, Longboat Key, Anna Maria Island, or Cortez if you want to see what large-scale destruction looks like.

But now, almost into November, how is our water quality holding up? Well, our long-term monitoring efforts have been affected by damage to our coastal fringe. Mote Marine Lab staff are dealing with facilities on City Island that were badly damaged. Our local governments have been rightly focused on issues such as clearing roads and debris removal and inspecting bridges, and other infrastructure. So, in response, the SBEP reached out to our colleagues at the University of Florida (UF), who coordinated a sort of rapid response water quality sampling effort from Tampa Bay down to the Caloosahatchee River, in coordination with our colleagues at the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, the Coastal and Heartland National Estuary Program, Charlotte County, and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

The researchers at UF have not only offered to analyze water samples, but they’ve driven down from Gainesville twice to collect samples from Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor. To help move this effort forward, both Ryan and I used our own personal boats to sample Sarasota Bay, allowing UF to focus their efforts elsewhere, where data collection was hindered by the lack of boats and/or crews. The data we collected have not all been analyzed just yet, but we do have results from bacteria sampling. We also have other entities that have been tracking bacteria levels as well.

Generally, speaking, the levels of bacteria in our open bay waters and along most of our beaches are good, although some of the shoreline areas have elevated levels still. In other words, sort of back to where we normally are. These results are discussed in greater detail below: