The Water Quality Issue

The Coastal Breeze issue dated December 29 includes a front page article titled “Councilors Face challenges in 2023.” Among the challenges addressed are “water quality issues” and one bullet point states that “waters located off-island demonstrate nutrient numbers as high if not higher than inland waters, pointing to a ‘regional issue’.”

One must be very careful regarding use of the terms “off-island” and “regional”. The term “off-island” as used in the report to the City from ERD, also known as “The Harper Report”, implies three testing locations; in the Marco River, Caxambas Pass and just off Resident’s Beach, i.e., not within the canal system, but clearly within “inland waters” and not truly “offshore.”

There are some who claim that, when it comes to the issue of algal growth within the canal system, a ‘do nothing’ approach is appropriate, the argument being: "if it's a regional issue then there's little point in trying to do anything about it locally".

If true, I would agree that might be a valid argument, but in fact there are no City or State-sponsored studies that actually test the hypothesis. In fact, the sites tested as “off-island” used to justify this stance do not test beyond the waters potentially influenced by Marco and adjacent communities.

By contrast, Clean Marco Waters (CMW), a group of which I am a participant, have studied the question, and we have reported the results testing true offshore locations on our website: https://cleanmarcowaters.com.

Our data show unequivocally that when one truly goes offshore into the Gulf, then there is zero evidence to suggest that either nitrate or phosphate concentrations around inshore Marco derive from offshore waters. These results have been shared previously with our decision makers, and public inspection is welcome.