The Perfect Storm

Florida’s water infrastructure is in dire straits.

BY ALEXANDRA MARVAR

Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers assesses the condition of bridges, dams, parks, ports, roads and other fundamental physical systems nationwide, and issues to America’s Infrastructure a letter grade. On this year’s report card, the United States earned a C- — not a score that inspires confidence.

States receive individual evaluations too, and while Florida was still awaiting its grade as of early July, it is expected to earn even lower marks. The Sunshine State ranks among the country’s lowest performers for drinking water—the ASCE estimates repairs and necessary maintenance would rack up nearly $22 billion. Nearly a quarter of its more than 1,100 dams have been deemed high-hazard status by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Outdated and inadequate water systems in communities throughout the state regularly make their way into national headlines following prohibitive flooding, catastrophic sewage spills, pollution-spurred algae blooms, and the resulting largescale fish kills and manatee deaths.

Golf course ponds suffer from an intense algae bloom likely linked to fertilizers applied to the golf course.

Dr. Aaron Adams

“As in many other states across the country, Florida’s wastewater infrastructure is old, crumbling, and leaky” said Jim McDuffie, president and CEO of Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. “But the issues here are compounded by the fact that Florida is surrounded by ocean.”

Per data from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), crumbling or overloaded sewage systems have resulted in thousands of reported spills over the past five years, unleashing more than 1.65 billion gallons of sewage since 2015. That’s more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools of wastewater, and all the excess nutrients and heavy metals, fertilizers and herbicides, and pharmaceutical medications that come with them. These contaminants pour into waterways, and from most places in the state, they don’t have far to travel to the sea, where they feed toxic bacteria, kill seagrass and marine life, and further weaken an already struggling coral reef ecosystem.

“We’ve seen failures resulting in spills after major storms, for sure, but also under more routine, daily operations,” McDuffie said. “Take, for example, the recent leaks in Fort Lauderdale.” There, overworked, decades-old sewer infrastructure led to six different sewer mane breaks, spilling some 230 million gallons of untreated water into neighborhoods, canals and the Tarpon River over the course of three months.

Florida’s water problems are both intertwined with and compounded by factors beyond control: like the state’s geology, with an ever-rising groundwater table thanks to sea level rise, and an eroding, porous, fissure-ridden limestone foundation that underlies most of the state; its geography, with 825 miles of coastline, regularly walloped by tropical storms; and its high urban density, which continues to swell. Ranked 22nd of the states by area, Florida is the country’s third most populous, more than doubling its population in the past 40 years.

And then, there is climate change: Even if Florida could get its infrastructure in check to meet today’s needs, warmer water temperatures, more frequent and intense hurricanes and more extreme king tides throw a wrench in the gears.

RISING WATERS

Florida’s water infrastructure issues are bubbling to the surface, particularly in the Florida Keys, where rising sea levels in turn raise the groundwater table, seeping through cracks in streets, inundating sewers, busting open pipes and flooding neighborhoods. Climate scientists say these problems will only worsen. By 2040, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change median prediction on sea level rise for the Florida Keys is 10 inches, while NOAA predicts the Keys will see sea levels rise as much as 17”.

This map shows the many surface connections across large areas by canals and streams. All flow to the coast, carrying contaminants to the flats.

Miami-Dade County

Accordingly, public officials recently committed to a plan to spend $1.8 billion over the next 25 years to elevate streets and install new drains, pump stations and other infrastructure to mitigate flooding. The strategy has a few holes, however, perhaps the most glaring being the absence of funding. Without it, officials say, whole communities may be lost to the water.

“Without a change in strategy, parts of the Keys will become accessible only by boat,” Kristina Hill, an environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Guardian, describing a vision of canals and floating buildings, like those not uncommon in villages across the Amazonian floodplain. For boatgoing visitors, this possible eventuality doesn’t sound entirely apocalyptic but Hill warned there are other factors to account for: “The islands will gradually disappear into a higher ocean,” she added, “potentially leaving a ruined landscape of leaky underground storage tanks, old pipes, and flooded road segments behind to pollute the water.”

The local Keys government and the state of Florida put a billion dollars into modernizing the island chain’s wastewater system in the 2010s, but there is still much work to be done to ensure critical water quality in the productive waters surrounding the islands. For example, the Keys are still home to dozens of injection wells where sewage effluent is injected into the porous coral and limestone bedrock that underlies the islands. New studies demonstrate leakage from these old wells, with the fouled waters polluting famous angling locations. In fact, there are indications that sewage water injected into wells on Florida’s mainland travel long distances underground and bubble up by the Keys. These problems demonstrate that the Keys conversion of its old septics to modern wastewater treatment is just one necessary step to maintain water quality in and around the island chain. And water quality is critical to maintaining the Keys’ world class fisheries as well as the adjacent coral reef.

The birthplace of flats fishing, the Keys have hosted more world records for tarpon, bonefish and permit than everywhere else in the world combined. But this complex tangle of human and environmental factors have brought about dramatic population fluctuations—including a bottoming out of Keys bonefish in the 1990s—and scientists are still working to understand how it all comes together.

According to Dr. Aaron Adams, BTT Director of Science and Conservation, some of these factors occur hundreds of miles away, in places where the bonefish migrate or spawn. But this species lives the vast majority of its lifespan in the shallows, and a bonefish’s health—and the health of the fishery at large—is very much tied to what’s happening near the shore, especially in this critical habitat around the Keys.

“No one factor can be isolated,” he said, referencing the series of intensive, BTT-funded studies he has overseen of the environmental factors that might influence bonefish population trends. “Many factors interact, but water quality is certainly high on the list.”

An analysis of water contaminants in the canals leading into Biscayne Bay revealed the presence of heavy metals including arsenic and copper along with banned pesticide DDT—all products of agricultural runoff—leading the organization to make agricultural practices and impact a focus area.

And a later study yielded an even more alarming revelation: Some of the bonefish sampled in a recent study were carrying as many as 16 different pharmaceuticals in their systems, from Aspirin to opioids. It appears that drugs flushed down drains and toilets enter the wastewater stream and treatment facilities do not sufficiently remove these contaminants from waters that are released back into the environment in sewage effluent. Adams said it isn’t yet known just precisely how these over-the-counter and prescription antibiotics, antidepressants, pain relievers and hormones impact marine life, but researchers do know they can cause behavioral changes and cloud natural instincts in ways that could jeopardize survival.

These contaminants can do weirder things, too, he said, referencing studies in which the presence of hormone mimickers in rivers from the Thames to the Potomac were causing male fish to change genders and even develop ovaries.

In countries including Sweden, technologies have been put into play to filter pharmaceuticals out of the water supply, but in the U.S., Adams said, trace amounts of drugs aren’t caught by the standard water treatment systems we have in place, and to date, they are unregulated, flowing into coastal waters unchecked.

THE SEPTIC PROBLEM

According to Adams, one key source of these contaminants is dysfunctional septic systems—and in addition to geological, geographic and climate factors, this is an aspect of Florida’s problematic water infrastructure that sets it apart. There are some 21 million septic systems in use in the U.S. today. In Florida, nearly one third of all households have septic—about 2.6 million statewide—making up more than 10 percent of the nationwide total.

This map shows the locations of known septic tanks in Miami-Dade County. Based on water table levels, 56 percent of the County’s septic tanks have less than 2 feet of dry ground at some time during the year, meaning that they are not properly filtering waste. A majority of septic tanks in the County are also on small lots in densely-developed north Biscayne Bay, where they are contributing to water pollution.

Miami-Dade County

Yet, these systems were explicitly not designed for densely populated, low-lying coastal environments like the vast majority of the state. For one thing, in order to function properly, septics need at least two feet of dry ground around their leach field. In Florida, especially on the coast, that dry ground is disappearing fast.

A flooded septic tank in Miami-Dade County.

Miami Waterkeeper

Take Miami-Dade County: According to the Miami Waterkeeper, more than half the county’s 120,000 septic systems are currently compromised. By 2040, as the water table creeps higher, that percentage is expected to increase to about two thirds. When these systems fail, runoff carries toxins into the nearby water supply, begetting the algal blooms, seagrass die-off and fish kills Florida is seeing more and more of.

Source: Miami Waterkeeper

THE ROOT OF THE ISSUE

When BTT was founded 25 years ago, the organization was intensely focused on research to understand a valuable recreational fishery showing signs of decline. Today, science is still the solid ground in which all the organization’s positions are rooted, but according to Jim McDuffie there is a growing focus on applying that research to rally for tangible change.

This shift is especially necessary when problems so sprawling, convoluted, and politically entangled as Florida’s water infrastructure issues have such a make-or-break impact on its recreational fisheries, McDuffie said.

“We never imagined that BTT would be walking the halls in Tallahassee or in D.C. advocating for wastewater infrastructure, but that’s where we’ve landed,” he said. “Our research has again pointed to a serious concern—a threat to flats species. What does it all mean? How are we going to affect change? It means very little unless we’re able to use our research, in this moment, to influence policy.”

BTT has been successful in recent efforts to tackle conservation issues at a policy level, McDuffie said, moving the dial to protect Florida’s recreational fisheries. The organization successfully advocated for the passage of bonefish and tarpon catch-andrelease regulations. A permit research project, funded by Costa Sunglasses, led to an extension of the closed harvest season to protect spawning permit and the subsequent seasonal no-fishing closure of Western Dry Rocks, the most important spawning site for flats permit in the Lower Keys. BTT’s work on juvenile tarpon habitats has led to changes in habitat restoration strategies by government agencies. And in the ongoing effort to restore the Everglades, BTT advocated aggressively for the authorization and funding of the new southern reservoir and fast-tracking of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project plan.

McDuffie said what BTT is learning in its research about the impacts of Florida’s failing water infrastructure is framing a new priority for the organization, which includes a call for septic conversion and sweeping modernization of sewage systems. But it won’t be a quick fix. Truly solving the problem will require not only a reconfiguration of priorities by residents and leadership, but the notable issue of some tens of billions of dollars in expenditures, per an estimate by the American Society for Engineers.

As the anticipated costs mount, the can gets kicked down the road: “Repairs to failing systems, septic conversion, and modernization have been somewhere on the to-do list of state and local governments for years, but there’s always something else higher on the list,” McDuffie said. “Septic tanks are underground. So were those decades-old pipes that burst in Fort Lauderdale—out of sight, out of mind. Competing priorities and a problem largely out of public view explains, in large part, why very little has been done.”

This caliber of change never happens in a straight line, McDuffie said, but today, he feels optimistic. Last spring, the Florida Legislature passed, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law, the Wastewater Grant Program, which will allocate $500 million in Federal funds over the next five years as well as $116 million in recurring dollars from documentary stamp revenue. This is in addition to $500 million appropriated at the governor’s request for climate resiliency planning, which McDuffie said offers additional opportunities to address water infrastructure needs.

PILING ON

As if the wastewater treatment challenges aren’t enough in their own right, the effects of longstanding policies in how Florida deals with other types of nutrient-laden water are also coming home to roost. This includes stormwater runoff, which although partly addressed is still a major issue. And runoff of nutrients from fertilizers used in agriculture and residential neighborhoods. But perhaps the notable recent impact of poor past policies is the spill of nutrient-laden water in Tampa Bay.

A fish kill in Miami’s Morningside Park in 2020.

Source: Miami Waterkeeper / Photo: Katherine Mikesell

Just this spring, the waste storage facility at Piney Point, along the shore of Tampa Bay, suffered a failure. To prevent a total collapse of the earthen dam that holds untold millions of gallons of contaminated sludge and water, which would have inundated nearby neighborhoods, upwards of 200 million gallons of contaminated wastewater was pumped into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee—a discharge sanctioned by the Florida DEP. The director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program compared the impact to that of dumping approximately 100,000 bags of hardware-store fertilizer into the bay over the course of several days.

A dead tarpon during a red tide event on the West Coast of Florida.

Capt. Tommy Locke

Not long after the Piney Point discharge—which contained high levels of nutrients—upper Tampa Bay began to experience a red tide that has grown in size and intensity. Although a direct cause and effect between the discharge and this red tide occurrence will be difficult to determine, it’s rare for red tide blooms to begin and remain in upper estuary waters. Ultimately, six Gulf Coast counties would be affected by what has come to be known as a “Florida red tide”—so called for the red color of the bloom’s signature toxic organism Karenia brevis—which makes the water unswimmable, causes respiratory distress in humans on land, and kills fish. After a prolonged red tide event in 2018, state agencies reported cleaning up thousands of pounds of dead marine life. The red tide in Tampa will forever be linked to photos of front-end loaders dumping thousands of pounds of dead fish into dumpsters along Tampa Bay beaches. There is still a long way to go on many fronts, but McDuffie sees a sea change taking place.

A sewage spill at Oleta River State Park on Biscayne Bay.

Source: Miami Waterkeeper / Photo: Greg Clark

“I think there’s greater understanding today that the state’s future across every sector will depend upon how well we deal with these issues,” he said. “There’s also a greater commitment, galvanized by harmful algae blooms, red tides, fish kills, closed beaches, and the increasing recognition that lost juvenile habitats are impacting fish populations. We need to nurture that commitment and help translate it into action in Tallahassee and DC. From our own mission perspective, it’s no over statement that the future of a multi-billion-dollar recreational fishery may be at stake. We can’t afford to lose it.”

Alexandra Marvar is a freelance journalist based in Savannah, Georgia. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine and elsewhere.