An artificial inlet for the Indian River Lagoon is irresponsible | Opinion

We are very concerned to learn about state funding for the Florida Institute of Technology for $800,000 to study the creation of a system to pump seawater into the Banana River.

This project relies on the false assumption that increased mixing between the Indian River Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean will miraculously solve the lagoon's pollution problems. This is yet another downstream "solution" that doesn’t address the upstream causes of the lagoon's decline: Poor management that has allowed an inadequate wastewater treatment strategy and polluted runoff to doom the lagoon and too many nutrients and contaminants. All available funds should be allocated to addressing these upstream problems. The main problems to the proposed approach are as follows:

Flushing away pollution does not work

Tampa Bay is a good example. Tampa Bay has a wide mouth, deep channels, and good tidal exchange, which means that Tampa Bay is highly flushed. Despite this, nearly all of Tampa Bay’s seagrass died in the 1970s because of too many nutrients and pollutants coming into it. To address the crisis, strict water management measures to reduce the input of nutrients and pollutants were passed. Only then, and after years of recovery, was the water healthy enough to support seagrass. Similarly, Chesapeake Bay is a well-flushed estuary that suffered an ecological collapse, with recovery efforts focusing on regulations to address causes of poor water quality.

This leaves politicians off the hook  

This artificial flushing will give the resource managers and politicians responsible for fixing the lagoon the political cover they need to avoid taking the action necessary to fix well-documented problems.

In a best-case scenario, artificial flushing may make things look better for a short time period, but this will only delay another ecological crash. Meanwhile, the problems of too many nutrients, poor management of freshwater flows, failing sewage treatment infrastructure, and the inflow of pollutants will not be addressed. The costs to repair and restore the lagoon will become more expensive over time.

Flushing will only expand the problems in the lagoon 

The tainted water from the Indian River Lagoon that people already don’t want to swim in will be pouring onto the beaches, potentially resulting in beach closures. This threatens locals and tourists alike, with obvious impacts on the economy.

Ocean water is not good for the lagoon 

Most of the lagoon is non-tidal, meaning that the flow is not influenced by the tides other than for a few miles from the existing inlets. Circulation is primarily wind driven. The ecosystem is a brackish water system maintained naturally by a long-term balance between the ocean and fresh water. The organisms in the lagoon are adapted to these conditions. Pumping ocean water into it will increase the salinity and will cause reproductive failure or kill many organisms, irrevocably changing the ecosystem.

The area around Sebastian Inlet also is mostly dead

Flushing in the Sebastian Inlet area has not effectively prevented the degradation of the nearby lagoon. There is virtually no seagrass and the nearby ecosystem is in a similar poor condition. Why would artificial pumping produce different results?

The peer reviewed scientific literature is full of studies that show that dilution of pollution is not a valid management policy. The repair and restoration to a healthy system will take time and proper spending of the half-cent sales tax that Brevard County  taxpayers approved, and will likely also require additional funds to fully address the problems.

Attempts to engineer a fix such as this is no different than a get-rich-quick scheme. Let’s fix the problem of excess nutrients at the sources, not by flushing them temporarily only to have them perpetually replaced because of a short-sighted, silver bullet approach.

Aaron Adams of Melbourne Beach has been conducting fish ecology research in the coastal waters of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean for 30 years. He is the director of science and Conservation for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. Mitchell  A. Roffer of Melbourne Beach has been conducting fisheries oceanographic research in Florida, the Atlantic oceans and around the world for more than 40 years. He is the founder and former owner of Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service, Inc. and now president of Fishing Oceanography Inc.