There was a flurry of environmental excitement in May when the legislature appropriated more than $200 million for cleaning up the Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee. That amount included $20 million to remove ecologically harmful muck from the central lagoon and the Eau Gallie River to reduce the nutrient load in the estuary.
Moving quickly by government standards, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection last month handed over $10 million to Brevard County to remove up to 350,000 cubic yards of muck from the lagoon.
“The last time I spoke with Brevard officials, they were in the engineering and permitting phase,” said Sen. Thad Altman, who was instrumental in securing money for muck removal. “A million of the $10 million will go to research and development conducted by FIT. We want to make sure we are dredging in the most beneficial locations for the greatest immediate benefit.”
Florida Institute of Technology scientists will help select the best sites to dredge and do pre- and post-dredge testing and analysis to determine how muck removal helps the lagoon.
Professor of Marine and Environmental Systems John Trefry, whose testimony at a senate committee in December put the appropriation process in motion, said he and his colleagues will begin work this month.
“We are close. We have written up our proposals and we should be announcing the study sites in the next week or two, which will be very exciting.
“My part is I will go out and determine how much muck is there and the exact composition of it. Others will look at seagrass and biology and other elements.”
Trefry and his colleagues will establish an ecological baseline, documenting the amount of seagrass and biological diversity in areas selected for dredging. After dredging is complete, they will reexamine the dredged areas to chart the degree of biological recovery.
“We have to show this works if we want the legislature to fund an ongoing effort,” Trefry says. “I think everything is on track and I am very optimistic this will be very helpful to the lagoon.”
Dubbed ‘black mayonnaise’ because of its consistency, the smelly muck is made up mainly of water, fine particles of soil or clay and rotting organic material. It damages lagoon ecology by releasing nutrients that feed destructive algae bloom and by clouding the water when stirred up by storms, cutting off light seagrass needs for photosynthesis and survival.
A world-renowned expert on sedimentation, Trefry told the Senate Committee on Environmental Preservation and Conservation there has been an “incredible expansion of muck” since he came to the area in the 1980s, due to fertilizer runoff and other causes.
“It is like a cancer that has been spreading,” he said in December. “There are now between five and seven million cubic yards of muck along the Brevard and Indian River County stretch of the lagoon. That is enough to cover 1,000 football fields a yard high.”
Trefry said besides clouding the water column and continually releasing nutrients that feed algae blooms, muck accumulates toxins and contains bacteria that deplete oxygen levels in the lagoon. It smothers all life forms other than bacteria. “Wherever the muck is, all habitable life is gone,” he said.
“The lagoon could recover almost overnight if you get a clean sand bottom again, with shrimp and crabs and oysters coming back along with seagrass and game fish,” Indian River County FIND Commissioner Paul Dritenbas said earlier this year.
“We realize $20 million is not going to fix the problem,” Altman said. “It will take at least $100 million over a five-year period to clean up most of the muck. But we need to get started and I think we can make significant inroads with the $20 million.”
The project is “expected to remove up to 672 tons of total nitrogen and 144 tons of total phosphorous contained in the muck deposits,” according to DEP. Those are the chemicals responsible for feeding algae bloom and degrading lagoon ecology.
Brevard County staff aims to have dredges in the water by January 2015, after FIT scientists complete their preliminary surveys.
The other $10 million of the current appropriation will be used to remove muck from the Eau Gallie River, which empties into the lagoon.
“It is critical we remove these sediments from our waterways and get the Indian River Lagoon on a pathway to health,” Altman said.