Clean water isn’t a luxury

For a while when I was young, my father had a demanding job based in a state other than the one in which we lived and was often away from home for extended periods of time. So, maybe out of guilt, he instituted an annual trip of enforced family togetherness during summer vacation.

While the places we went were exotic — at least to us — we weren't always enamored. At a resort in Montreal, it poured for a week, there were frogs in the swimming pool and my mother was rushed to the hospital with an appendicitis attack. During a visit to a cattle ranch in New Mexico, we spent days urging dude-weary ponies to break out of a walk and nights checking beds for scorpions, leaving an enduring love of equines and enmity of crawly things.

But the year we took a guided river rafting trip through the Grand Canyon was memorable for all the right reasons. At the time, commercial expeditions down the Colorado River were in their infancy. Its waters and the canyon basin — where we slept under the stars, marveling at the rotation of the Earth viewed through the window of sky between opposing canyon walls — were pristine.

Even then (this was the late ’60s) the powers that be had the good sense to recognize it would only remain unsullied if the humans taking up temporary residence reduced their impact and left no trace behind. That meant carrying out whatever you brought in, not disturbing any vegetation and adhering to a rigid bathroom protocol.

Wading into the ice-cold waters to pee wasn’t always fun, but it was the rule (“The solution is dilution”). Nor did we, as squeamish pre-teens, relish the idea of sitting on a can — at the time, an actual metal can, sometimes known as the “groover” for the lines it left on your back side — to relieve ourselves. Or, when pressed, using a “to go” bag, reminiscent of today’s sacks for dog waste. (I’m told portable toilets are the standard now.)

Considering this was 50 years ago and that today more than 100,000 commercial visitors a year raft the Colorado, you can imagine the mountain of manure that would have accumulated by now without that prudence. The Colorado has its own environmental challenges these days, mostly due to agriculture increasing the water's salinity, but a deluge of dung isn’t one of them.

Unfortunately, Sarasota County didn’t have the same foresight when it began welcoming a surge of newcomers over the past decade. Booming tourism and rampant development are great for the economy, and we’ve certainly taken advantage of our popularity to exploit both. But somewhere along the way we forgot to figure in the byproducts of all those extra bodies. And, after a long period of ignoring the strain on our systems, we’re getting a pretty good wake-up call.

Last week, county officials delivered dire warnings about pollutants in area waterways and what could happen if the county’s three wastewater treatment plants aren’t upgraded soon. This came on the heels of the third major sewage spill in less than two weeks: nearly 800 gallons of raw sewage that leaked into a neighborhood east of I-75 on May 2; a lift station failure that caused more than 5,000 gallons to spill into a holding pond in Gulf Gate on May 5; and the 1,200 gallons discharged when a Sarasota County crew attempted to replace a deteriorated iron wastewater pipe near Venice on May 9.

A lawsuit filed by a number of clean water advocacy groups in late April accuses the county of violating the Clean Water Act by discharging more than 800 million gallons of reuse water without a proper permit since 2013. The suit also alleges the county has illegally dumped sewage and reclaimed water into Phillippi Creek, Cowpen Slough, Whitaker Bayou and other waterways leading to Sarasota Bay, Roberts Bay, Dona Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

The city of Sarasota — which upgraded its sole water treatment facility in 1989 — has its own troubles. More than 900,000 gallons of raw sewage flowed into Sarasota Bay last December after a violent storm forced open a deteriorated city pipe. And the new (can it still be called new when it was approved in 2015?) Lift Station 87 project at Mound Street and Osprey Avenue, meant to stop sewage from being dumped into Hudson Bayou, has been continually altered and delayed.

Meanwhile, since the repeal of a regulation in 2012, the plethora of homes in Sarasota County still on septic systems undergo no annual inspections to detect leaks and discharges. Nor is there any comprehensive plan underway to connect more of them to sewer lines.

“It’s the natural course of community growth that septic systems are installed initially as an area develops, then when there is a denser population, sewers are installed,” reader Mike Holderness wrote me last August. “Sarasota has had the population density for decades, but has failed to invest enough in the sewer system necessary to support the growing population.”

Officials informed the Sarasota County Commission last week that an upgrade of its three wastewater treatment plants to an “advanced” system, as well as converting septic to sewer and reducing nutrients in stormwater, could carry a price tag of $310 million. That’s not including annual operating costs. It’s a sobering number, but one that will only escalate if ignored.

Today, if you want to float the Colorado River, you still pack out whatever you bring in or produce. It’s an obligation that comes with the privilege of being there.

Sarasota, with its reputation as the best little (fill in the blank ... beach town, arts city, retirement paradise ...) on the Gulf Coast, ought to have the same discipline. If you’re going to welcome growth and development, it should come with the political will to insist necessities such as clean water and environmental preservation come before extras like rowing parks and golf courses.

Contact columnist Carrie Seidman at 941-361-4834 or carrie.seidman@heraldtribune.com. Follow her on Twitter @heraldtribune.com and Facebook at facebook.com/cseidman.