Local fish kill reported as Buchanan renews push to study red tide’s long-term effect
It might not be red tide, but something is killing fish at Robinson Preserve.
Black vultures fought over a small collection of at least 20 dead fish that collected in a retention pond near a park entrance Monday morning. The fish kill report comes just days after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced that Karenia brevis algae had disappeared from Manatee County waters.
Updated algae reports provided by FWC and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection show that algae blooms have not been detected in Manatee County.
Traces of the harmful algae blooms have been detected in Sarasota County, however. U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, used the algae’s brief resurgence to urge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to consider his funding request for more red tide research that the House of Representatives approved in June.
“We need to know how much of a threat red tide is to human health,” Buchanan said. “We know of the temporary physical discomfort it causes, but we don’t know much beyond that.”
“Now we need to find out if exposure presents a long-term threat to human health,” he added.
In a letter to McConnell and Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Buchanan urged them to consider including $6.25 million for the National Institutes of Health to conduct a long-term health effects study.
“This issue is of particular concern in my home state of Florida, which suffered one of the worst bouts of red tide in the state’s history last year,” he wrote. “And now, red tide blooms have resurfaced in my own backyard off the coasts of Manatee, Sarasota, Collier and Lee counties.”
Buchanan isn’t the only lawmaker concerned about red tide. In an opinion column provided to the Bradenton Herald Friday, State Rep. Margaret Good, D-Sarasota, called on her fellow politicians to implement her legislation to update stormwater rules across the state.
“Current regulations require clean up of stormwater systems after waters have become polluted, which is expensive and harmful to the environment,” Good wrote. “Instead, we must create rules that ensure pollutants are minimized as the water moves through the system.”
Good filed a similar bill last year, but legislators are expected to pay more attention to the effort this year thanks to the recommendations of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Blue-Green Algae Task Force. The group pointed to stormwater runoff as one of the main sources of nutrition for harmful algae blooms.
Good is challenging Buchanan for his seat in the U.S. House in the 2020 election.
This story was originally published October 21, 2019 at 3:04 PM.
