Florida’s Toxic Algae

More than a century ago, the Everglades were drained for development, agriculture and, subsequently, flood control. A network of canals, levees and water-control structures has fundamentally changed the natural ecosystem. Today the Everglades is half the size it was then.

Lake Okeechobee, the “liquid heart” of the Everglades, and the rivers that drain it to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean — the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, respectively — are part of this human-altered system that helps sustain the greater Everglades region.

Much of what remains of the historic Everglades is heavily polluted by phosphorous, nitrogen and mercury from urban and agricultural sprawl. The lake in particular has been besieged by nutrient pollution for decades, causing unprecedented blooms of blue-green algae. Also known as cyanobacteria, blue-green algae produce cyanotoxins, which pose a threat to people, their pets, and the aquatic environment.

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flushes water from Lake Okeechobee down to rivers and estuaries, including the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, all the nutrient pollution and toxic blue-green algae go with it — worsening red tide, a type of harmful algal bloom. The Corps’ discharges of polluted water are killing countless marine species and crippling local economies.

Making matters worse, following years of regulatory failures and mismanagement, in 2021 Florida regulators and Gov. Ron DeSantis authorized the discharge of hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater from the Piney Point phosphogypsum stack into Tampa Bay. The Piney Point gypstack is a mountain of toxic waste, topped by an impoundment of hundreds of millions of gallons of process wastewater, stormwater and dredged spoil from Port Manatee. Nutrient pollution from the discharge fueled a deadly red tide that killed dozens of Florida manatees.

OUR WORK

Lake Okeechobee experiences the most widespread and sustained blue-green algae blooms, but similar blooms harm lakes, rivers and springs throughout the state. So the Center is working to protect people and wildlife there from toxic algae.

In 2019 the Center led Florida conservation organizations in petitioning the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to adopt water-quality standards for harmful cyanotoxins.

In 2020, along with other conservation groups, we won a lawsuit compelling the Army Corps of Engineers to update its management of Lake Okeechobee and address how its discharges from Lake Okeechobee significantly harm rivers and their estuaries — and the endangered species depending on them, from Florida manatees to sea turtles and coral. Since our suit, federal agencies have finally recognized the synergistic relationship between these nutrient-rich discharges and red tide, and the Corps has updated its management plan for the lake to better support water quality.  Its new plan is expected to reduce the amount of discharged water entering the coastal estuaries.

In 2021, with local allies, we sued Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida regulators for allowing the release of hundreds of tons of hazardous pollutants from Piney Point into Tampa Bay and groundwater. Thanks to that lawsuit, in 2023 Florida regulators issued a draft Clean Water Act permit for the site — a permit operators had gone without for 22 years.

And since our 2019 petition, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has updated its monitoring and reporting procedures for harmful algal blooms. But by May 2024, it still hadn’t finished reviewing its water-quality standards or adopted standards for cyanotoxins. So on the five-year anniversary of our petition, we took our campaign to the federal level, petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine that it’s necessary for the federal government to step in and set water-quality standards for cyanotoxins. Since the state has failed to carry out its water-quality responsibilities under the federal Clean Water Act, it’s up to the EPA to protect human health from Florida’s toxic algae.

Check out our press releases to learn more about the Center's work against toxic algae.