News

By Jane Smith

    Stormwater runoff from agriculture areas in the west and from lawns in the eastern urban areas continues to plague the southern segment of the Lake Worth Lagoon.
    Fewer seagrass plants were found in a 2013 survey, and it looks like the same will hold true for 2014 in the southern part of that estuary, according to the county’s Department of Environmental Resources Management.
    The southern segment starts at the Lake Worth Bridge and runs south to the Boynton Inlet.
    Between 2007 and 2013, sea grass in the south section slipped 1 percentage point, dropping from 23 percent, or 1,688 acres of seagrass, to 22 percent, or 1,592 acres of seagrass.
    “In the past, we’ve done aerial surveys. But the water clarity was so poor in 2013 from the runoff of Tropical Storm Isaac in 2012 that we went to divers,” said Eric Anderson, an environmental analyst with DERM.
    The divers survey costs about $130,000, which is comparable to the aerial survey, Anderson said. “Divers tell a better story of what is going on because of the poor water clarity and small size of the seagrass plants.”
    One variety, called Johnson’s sea grass, is the first marine plant to be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. It is a food source for manatees and sea turtles, acting like a “coastal canary” that indicates the health of the lagoon.
    “The seagrass is as an important part of our ecosystem,” said Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue. “The discharges from the ag area and the urban runoff water laced with herbicides and nutrients just degrades the whole environment.”  
    His group is concerned about the health of the coral reefs along the oceanfront. Because the lagoon water drains into the ocean, its poor quality hurts the reefs. “It won’t get better until there is more filtering of the runoff,” he said.
    Stormwater treatment areas are already in place in the western part of the county, Anderson said. One is set up to divert runoff from flowing into the C-51 Canal that drains into the lagoon. It holds 2,078 acre-feet of water that is filtered before flowing south into the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. (An acre-foot of water is the amount of water covering 1 acre to a depth of 1 foot, or 325,900 gallons.)
    Water managers are hoping that when the first phase of the C-51 reservoir is done that it can store 16,000 acre-feet of water to help stop more ag runoff from flowing into the lagoon via the C-51 canal.
The reservoir sits on land owned by Palm Beach Aggregates, a rock mining company, on Southern Boul-evard, west of Wellington.