Waterways Advisory Committee Continues Work on Water Quality

The search for a magical silver bullet to deal with issues concerning the ever-elusive water quality concerns on and around Marco Island continues to be one which escapes the grasp of all parties who continue to work towards a solution to those issues.

Early in 2020 the Marco Island City Council engaged the engineering firm headed by Harvey Harper, PhD of Environmental Research and Design, of Belleview, Florida. Their goal was to determine the sourcing of the abnormally high nutrient levels within the waters in and around Marco Island and the subsequent impact they have regarding water quality in our region.

That report by Dr. Harper was released in 2021, as well as a subsequent follow up review of the city’s re-use process done by Jacobs Engineering which is located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and may have added more questions to the issue before the city’s Waterways Committee and city staff. Dr. Harper in his report back to the city council would strongly refer to the fact that the issues concerning water quality in Southwest Florida was one which was “regional” in scope and should be approached in that manner.

That was very much in evidence at the December meeting of the Waterways Committee as they continued to grapple with the complexity of the issue before them, including some very interesting test results since Hurricane Ian struck the island in late September of this year.

Even before Hurricane Ian struck the island this last fall, the numbers for 2021 had dropped below the 0.30 milligrams per liter standard required by the State of Florida for both phosphorus and nitrogen. The testing numbers for 2022 appear to continue to be favorable for the second year in a row and are trending in the right direction which is positive in nature.

Terrell-Hall, the city’s consulting engineering firm pointed to the possibility that those increased numbers back in 2017 may have been a result of decaying debris in the Marco waters from Hurricane Irma in September 2017.

“The city presently tests at fourteen sites within canals. Of the 56 tests performed from August through November, 36 of those tests showed undetectable nitrogen amounts, and the total average from all sites was below the 0.3 limit mandated by the state,” according to Chairman David Crain the Waterways Committee Chairman.

The city is reviewing aeration within canals to help improve circulation and the dissolved oxygen content which may help to reduce the 50-year accumulation of sediment within those canals and reduce the occasional presence of a “benthic mat” which has been a concern of those on dead end canals. Aeration was a subject matter discussed at the December meeting when city staff presented a draft for request for information regarding aeration and other similar systems for a pilot project that may be eligible for some funding on the state level.

Jeff Poteet, Director of the City’s Utility Department, also reported on their efforts to explain the positive effects of the nutrients in reuse water to condominium associations in an effort to have those associations reduce the need for additional fertilizer being applied on their properties, further improving the detectible nitrogen numbers during monthly testing. 

Poteet’s efforts had recently been negatively impacted by staffing shortages within his department, but he is confident they will be able to return to a more active educational effort and believes that he will have that effort completed by the end of first quarter of 2023.

The Waterways Advisory Committee meets on the third Thursday of each month at 9:00 AM in council chambers at 51 Bald Eagle Drive. Those meetings are open to the public.