Longboat Key leaving cleanup of massive sewage spill near Sarasota Bay to Mother Nature

Longboat Key officials said they have no plans to clean up an estimated 26 million gallons of sewage that poured from the town’s only sewer mainline over 12 days last month without being noticed by staff.

The spill occurred on the mainland about 350 feet from the shoreline of Sarasota Bay. Town officials say most of the sewage is contained in an area of mangroves and their intention is to let Mother Nature clean up the mess.

Longboat Key Town Manager Tom Harmer said in a prepared statement late Wednesday that the town has no plans to conduct any cleanup efforts based on recommendations from its environmental consultants at Environmental Science Associates.

The company’s corporate media offices are on the west coast of the U.S. and were not immediately available to respond.

Harmer said the mangrove system that contains most of the sewage would do the cleanup work naturally.

“The leaked material was diffused within a large mangrove-populated land area, and a significant portion of the leaked material remains and is attenuated within this natural mangrove area,” Harmer said. “This mangrove system has provided natural treatment and attenuation of the material.”

Justin Bloom, founder of Suncoast Waterkeeper, which filed the initial notice of public pollution to the state, said a wait-and-see approach raises a lot of concerns for a body of water that is already on the brink of declining due to man-made pollutants.

Bloom acknowledged the mangrove system “will attenuate some amount like they say, but how much remains to be seen. It needs to be monitored and determined what the impacts are and what they are going to be as we move forward. Mangroves will absorb some of the pollution, but 26 million gallons? A good amount is going to migrate out into the bay without a doubt.”

Harmer downplayed the recent test results showing high levels of bacteria associated with feces, including Enterococci, E. Coli, and fecal coliform in two areas near the spill. Harmer said the results “are not indicating any significant water quality concerns,” though one test showed contamination at a level almost double the maximum standard set by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the other was almost six times higher.

Algae blooms starting to form near spill area

Bloom said the results are indeed high, but he said it could have been much worse. However, his testing shows feces-related pollutants in other areas of the bay that weren’t included in the town’s testing. Even worse, he said, are the appearances of algae blooms.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission updates its algae bloom dashboard once a week. It has not yet shown the appearances of algae blooms in the spill area as of Thursday, but Bloom said he’s submitted the water samples from the blooms he’s observed to FWC and is awaiting the results.

“I have a lot of concerns,” Bloom said. “In particular, in this area of the spill is an important habitat that is already significantly stressed by any number of reasons. I’m concerned a significant discharge of sewage like this may tip the balance the bay has been trying to maintain.”

Suncoast Waterkeeper is a nonprofit environmental organization. Its members monitor water quality throughout Manatee and Sarasota counties, and the group was part of the legal fight to stop the development of Longbar Point where Carlos Beruff is building Aqua by the Bay. The spill occurred on land owned by Beruff.

Algae blooms form due to excessive nutrients in the water. Bloom said sewage is extremely high in nutrients and though his organization has observed blooms forming, “I personally can’t scientifically connect the two at this time.”

Longboat Key remains under scrutiny by DEP, which is still investigating how the spill occurred and the potential future environmental impacts. Despite being warned by Manatee County that the town likely had a problem, the spill, which began about June 17, wasn’t confirmed until June 29.

Town officials say the leak was repaired June 30, and that they are still trying to determine the cause of the break in the line, which runs under Sarasota Bay and carries 2 million gallons of sewage daily to one of Manatee County’s wastewater treatment facilities.

In 2016, Longboat Key did a study that found the 40-year-old line line would work for another 20 years.

‘Poor job’ of communicating spill to the public

Harmer is also downplaying the amount of sewage that was spilled and said further evaluations of how much did spill will help the town determine what happened to the line.

“It is unknown at this time how much material leaked from the pipe, but we believe it may be considerably less than preliminary estimates,” he said. “These estimates will be further refined to a more reasonable and accurate number based on third party forensic investigation into the pipe leak point, system flows and hydraulic analysis.”

“This information will also assist the town in evaluating the cause of the leak,” Harmer said.

The original estimates were based on the line’s 2-million gallon a day capacity and the fact that it leaked for at least 12 days. Bloom said daily dissipation may make it impossible to determine how much was spilled.

“Hopefully, enough tidal flush will help the worse of the impact and some will be dissipated, but we have to rely on the experts to study that and determine what the impacts will be,” Bloom said. “Unfortunately, this happened in an isolated area that made it more difficult to discover and repair.”

Bloom said he hopes to see some changes in the way Longboat Key does things in the future.

“I hope we’re able to get a good handle on what happened and the harms from the spill so we can make sure the town is able to appropriately mitigate the harm done to the environment,” he said. “But also, moving forward, I hope the town makes sure this never happens again and installs a second pipeline to keep as a backup.”

U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, confirmed the town is “looking into building a backup pipe in case this were to happen again. I will be closely monitoring the situation and remain in contact with local officials to make sure the situation is properly resolved and that we have addressed added safeguards going forward.”

Bloom said Longboat has done “a poor job in communicating this situation to the public. But I do keep in mind that they don’t have a large collection and treatment system and a significant staff to maintain their system. All they have is a collection system so they are a small town that was taken by surprise and didn’t necessarily have the experience to deal with the magnitude of this spill.”

What the town does in the future is one thing, but the short-term impacts of the spill is the biggest concern for Bloom.

“One of the key factors to determine the health of a local waterway is the health of the sea grass, which has been on the decline in the bay,” Bloom said. “What I’m concerned about is whether this spill will tip that sensitive scale.”