VENICE

County touts quality of water

Officials highlight improvement programs, financial commitment during Tiger Bay forum

Earle Kimel
earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com
Chuck Walter, stormwater division manager for Sarasota County Public Utilities; Chuck Henry, director of the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County; and Lee Hayes Byron, director of Sarasota County UF/IFAS Extension and Sustainability discussed the ways Sarasota County has worked on improving water quality, during a presentation Friday to members of The Argus Foundation and South County Tiger Bay Club. [HERALD-TRIBUNE STAFF PHOTO / EARLE KIMEL]

VENICE — Between efforts to improve the water supply, clean up stormwater runoff and improve wastewater treatments, Sarasota County government and taxpayers have spent almost $1 billion over the past 25 years in improving water quality, county officials said.

Almost half of that has gone to improving stormwater flow in the watershed and reducing nutrients — resulting in improvements such as the Celery Fields and more recently the Dona Bay watershed cleanup of water that flows from Cow Pen Slough.

On Friday, in a preview of a presentation that will be given at a symposium in June, county officials highlighted aspects of those efforts at a joint meeting of the Argus Foundation and the South County Tiger Bay Club, hosted at the Venetian Golf & River Club.

“I thought, when we were putting this together, that South County was ground zero for red tide and we’re always talking about water quality, and the best place to hold this would be in South County,” Argus Foundation Executive Director Christine Robinson told a packed crowd of more than 110 people.

Chuck Walter, stormwater division manager for Sarasota County Public Utilities, Chuck Henry, director of the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County, and Lee Hayes Byron, director of Sarasota County UF/IFAS Extension and Sustainability, broke the topic up into three general areas: water supply and stormwater management, wastewater treatment and fertilizer and landscape management.

The key to improving water quality is nitrogen control. While nitrogen and phosphorous feed algae blooms, including red tide, phosphorus is abundant at the surface in Florida.

“As we start to think about how are we going to manage water quality to affect these algal species — whether it’s red tide, blue-green algae or chlorophyll a — our real underlying strategy is based on nitrogen and how can we manage nitrogen,” Walter said.

Walter explained how the county’s stormwater treatment system essentially moves all water — either stormwater, or reclaimed wastewater used for irrigation — through the ecosystem.

In providing summary of projects Sarasota County has invested in to improve water quality, Walter briefly touched on the $120 million T. Mabry Carlton Water Treatment Plant, which uses reverse-osmosis to purify groundwater for drinking.

He also pointed to the roughly $175 million the county as spent since the 1990s to purchase small package-plant wastewater treatment facilities to consolidate the number from 116 to 36 today, improving the reliability; the city of Sarasota’s $80 million commitment to advanced wastewater treatment, compared with the previous process that had nutrients flowing into Whitaker Bayou; and Sarasota County’s $120 million commitment to convert 10,000 homes in the Philippi Creek watershed from septic to central sewer.

But that flow — once its used for irrigation — ultimately goes through the stormwater treatment system.

That’s where $500 million has been spent in recent decades. The Celery Fields pulls double duty as flood control and water purification.

The Dona Bay project is designed to reduce the flow of fresh water from Cow Pen Slough to Dona Bay. The water that travels down the 14.5-mile slough, which was dug to drain land in the Fruitville area for agricultural purposes, has reduced the salinity in Dona Bay and harmed the oyster beds.

That plan started in 2005 but was derailed by the Great Recession. Last March, Sarasota county committed $4 million to match another $4 million from the state.

The water would be held in a former Albritton orange grove as part of a 380-acre reservoir. The water may be eventually diverted to an old Venice Minerals site that’s used for water storage and back to the Myakka River, where it flowed before the canal.

Walter also touched upon the role of stormwater ponds, which are not primarily designed to reduce the flow of nutrients — specifically nitrogen — into the waterways.

“The primary concern of stormwater treatment systems was to take care of oils and grease,” Walter said. “Keep out the bottles, cans, trash, those types of things from flowing into the stormwater system.”

Only between 20 and 60 percent of nutrients are removed by the ponds, which he dubbed “a hydraulic shock absorber.”

Henry, the director of the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County, dealt with sewer and septic systems.

There are about 40,000 permitted septic systems in the county. But they aren’t really designed to control nitrogen flow, either.

“They’re super good at removing pathogens and bacteria, which is what their principal design is for — not so good at removing nutrients,” Henry said, then added that the average septic system removes about 30 percent of the nitrogen from the water processed through the drain field.

About 12,500 septic systems in Sarasota County are on land within 900 feet of surface waters and contribute nutrients to the water. For the average system, that’s about 25 to 30 pounds of nitrogen annually.

There are advanced treatment methods that can reduce that flow. Henry noted that the city of North Port has a conservation overlay district near some of the sensitive waters, where an additional aeration treatment is required to further reduce pathogens and bacteria.

New state standards would call for a 50 percent reduction in nitrogen.

He said better education for homeowners about the care and maintenance of their septic systems — including regular inspection and pump-outs — can make sure that systems are more efficient.

Education was the hallmark for the presentation by Byron, the director of Sarasota County UF/IFAS Extension and Sustainability.

That includes both educating professionals on proper fertilization methods and existing regulations.

IFAS conducts workshops and has been the centerpiece of the city of Venice’s Florida Friendly landscaping workshops.

IFAS also concentrates heavily on educating youths, with every eighth-grader in the county learning about the nitrogen cycle in the watershed.

Peer-to-peer pass-through knowledge is important, too.

“If you are passionate about this,” Byron said, “please share that passion with your neighbors.”