Water Pollution

Last year an appeals court struck down Florida’s plans to restore polluted springs, siding with the advocacy group that said those plans were ineffective. Now, as the state works on revisions, advocates fear the pending changes will still fail Florida springs.

There has been a change of heart that releases of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River are no longer a near-apocalypse happening but rather a beneficial event

Passed by the Florida Legislature, SB 1532 allows private companies to buy the new water quality enhancement credits originally intended only for government agencies.

In 2022, the top items collected during the International Coastal Cleanup were cigarette butts, plastic bottles, food wrappers, bottle caps, plastic bags, foam and plastic food containers, paper cups and plates, and plastic straws or stirrers.

University of Florida scientist Tracie Baker, canoed the same extremely remote 130-mile path that explorer Hugh Willoughby traveled 125 years ago — with the goal of comparing water in 2022 with 1897 and assessing the intrusion of modern chemicals into some of the most remote wilderness in America.

Robert “Bob” Knight, the founder of FSI, said he fears Silver Springs will meet the same fate as Gilchrest Blue Spring. In July, a sinkhole opened in the spring and flooded the water with sediment. He said it’s all empty and almost dead now. Nitrate levels are at a high, and about a third of the spring’s flow is lost.

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating an oil spill at Port Manatee that caused over 19,000 gallons of polluted water. With a lot of unknowns, environmentalists are calling for more transparency into details of the spill.

The Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

Florida’s estuaries once teemed with clams, oysters and other bivalves that helped keep waters clean and seagrasses healthy. By the mid-20th century, only a fraction of the state’s vast shellfish beds and reefs remained. Can a small clam make a big difference in serious water pollution hotspots like the Indian River Lagoon?

For a century, the glass bottom boat tours at Wakulla Springs celebrated Florida’s seemingly endless depths of clean, clear water. With the water too murky to see through the glass, the boats are no longer running regularly — a symbol of the pollution plaguing the state’s freshwater and the cascade of consequences to come.

New research finds that human pollution influences the severity of red tides more directly than scientists previously understood. The connection sheds light on the need for better water-quality monitoring statewide — and ultimately, to reduce the nutrient pollution flowing into Florida’s waterways.

After decades of pollution suffocated Tampa Bay and killed half its seagrass and much of its marine life, unprecedented political cooperation and hundreds of science-guided projects brought the estuary back to life. Tampa Bay became a symbol for the success of the Clean Water Act of 1972, but seagrasses and fish have begun to die again.