Why are we still swimming and fishing in sewage plant effluent? | Guestview

Frances Dunham
Guest columnist

At Navarre Beach, Santa Rosa County’s wastewater treatment plant has a state permit to dump as much as 900,000 gallons of sewage effluent per day into Santa Rosa Sound. For much of the year, it’s much less than that, but during the summer – peak swimming and fishing season – it increases dramatically. The County is now requesting another 5-year permit to continue this primitive and unhealthy method of sewage disposal.

Despite promises made as much as 20 years ago to remove this direct discharge into the Sound, it continues, growing each year as development brings more people to the beach that we advertise as a pristine destination for family vacations.

Hidden threats

Most parents would never let their children swim in sewage effluent, but there are no signs to warn them about the Navarre Beach plant and its discharge.

When you think of sewage plant effluent, you picture very unpleasant images. There are other pollutants, however, that you can’t even see, and probably never imagined. Many of them are not removed by the treatment plant. They aren’t even tested for during monitoring.

Do you want your family swimming in other people’s hormones, cosmetics, cleaning products, flame retardants, pesticides, all manner of legal and illegal pharmaceuticals, and other contaminants? The sewage effluent may contain anything and everything we pour down our drains or flush down our toilets. Did you know that Navarre Beach is one of only two Florida beach communities that still dump sewage effluent right where people are fishing and swimming? The other one is Pensacola Beach.

The nursery, the dumping ground

It isn’t only humans who suffer from this sewage effluent discharge.

There are also contaminants that can cause toxic algae to bloom and others that can kill the seagrasses and sea life that indicate a healthy water body. Santa Rosa Sound is the place where young fish and shellfish grow and develop to maturity.

Deep water predator species and game fish depend on this bonanza of sealife from the Sound.

Asking for trouble

When swimmers, fishermen, other recreational users, fish and shellfish are affected by sewage plant effluent, local economies take a hit. Restaurants, marinas, hotels, real estate, and other businesses are vulnerable.

Last year was brutal for many Florida communities, with blue-green algae and red tide taking a terrible toll on human health and economies. Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous in wastewater fertilize toxic blue-green algae that blooms in lower salinity estuaries like Santa Rosa Sound.

What do we do now?

It’s time to heed the warnings from other Florida estuaries.

Ask Santa Rosa County to make good on promises to remove the wastewater discharge by a date certain and ask for a public hearing on this matter. Email the commissioners at bocc@santarosa.fl.us.

And on Tuesday, March 26, from 4 – 6 p.m. at the Tiger Point Community Center, tell the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, that promise must be part of the permit currently up for renewal. Written comments can be submitted directly to Kim Allen, DEP, by email at kim.allen@FloridaDEP.gov.

Frances Dunham has lived in south Santa Rosa County for 45 years. She is a co-founder of the Santa Rosa Sound Coalition and Citizens Against Toxic Exposure.