Group wants nitrogen removed

BY JIM WAYMER
FLORIDA TODAY

From Cape Canaveral to Vero Beach, about 25 million gallons of partially treated sewage is discharged daily into deep-injection wells, the percolation ponds of small beachside sewer plants, and thousands of septic tanks along the south beaches.

INDIALANTIC - Joe Demers dripped with ocean water he fears might contain traces of beachside toilet flushes.

"We've had surfers that have gotten sick with earaches and headaches," said the 55-year-old Rockledge resident.

He was one of about a dozen members of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation who paddled out in unison Saturday to bring attention to the threat of sewage contamination in Brevard's surf.

"What would happen if our beaches have to close because of excess bacteria or fecal coliform?" asked Greg Gordon, chairman of Surfrider's Sebastian Inlet Chapter.

"Let's paddle out while we still can," he said.

From Cape Canaveral to Vero Beach, about 25 million gallons of partially treated sewage is discharged daily into deep-injection wells, the percolation ponds of small beachside sewer plants, and thousands of septic tanks along the south beaches. Cruise ships and gambling ships from Port Canaveral dump another 400,000 gallons of sewage, dishwater, shower water and other wastewater off Brevard every day.

The 25 million gallons a day that go into the ground equates to 4,276 pounds of nitrogen a day and 1,499 pounds of phosphorus. No one knows how much makes its way to the surf, or how damaging it is. But Peter Barile, an environmental scientist who advises Surfrider, says he has measured nitrogen levels in the surf at double what red tide and other harmful algae need to bloom. He thinks much of it may be coming from sewage.

"It suggests there's an adequate nitrogen amount to support the things we're seeing: seaweed overgrowth on reefs and red tides," said Barile, a researcher with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce.

Seeping sewage?

Surfrider asked Barile to test the surf water after a severe red tide hit Brevard in the fall of 2003, killing fish and causing respiratory irritation in humans. While diving off Brevard last year, he and the Surfrider members found thick tufts of invasive seaweed blanketing near-shore coquina reefs. It was a seaweed species known to thrive in places with sewage pollution. They also saw another algae species that is associated with sewage pollution in Boston Harbor.

Barile and Surfrider have suggested nitrogen from sewage may be seeping up from the ocean bottom.

Barile's tests prompted Brevard and the Canaveral Port Authority to pay a federal oceanographic laboratory in Miami $100,000 to review his work. In January, the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory -- a division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration -- concluded there was insufficient data to determine whether Brevard's sewage is leaching into the surf at damaging levels.

The report examined past state and county water tests but drew no new samples. The federal panel also found no strong evidence of a relationship between coastal nutrients inputs and red tide blooms, a claim Barile disputes.

County and port officials criticized Barile for putting up his findings on Surfrider's Web site before they were peer-reviewed. Barile's findings were subsequently published in the November edition of the Journal of Coastal Research. The NOAA laboratory released its conclusions in January. But the chief researcher who runs the NOAA lab in Miami said his team didn't receive Barile's paper until Friday.

"I was, frankly, appalled. I got it this morning," Peter Ortner, chief scientist at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, said Friday. "That paper has two or three times of the additional local data that was available and my people requested from Peter Barile. . . . No one knew that he actually had a paper accepted. . . . I feel like these people wasted our time."

Revisions ahead

Ortner said the additional information from Barile's paper would be factored into his team's report but could not say whether it would change the panel's conclusions. They have a week to revise their report, before Brevard County officials conduct a March 28 public meeting in Viera to present it.

"I don't consider the document to be done until it considers all the available data," Ortner said. "That's a lot of additional data points."

Barile said the NOAA team could have accessed his paper in their own marine science library, or by doing an Internet search.

"This paper was going to our peers, to the most objective people available," Barile said Saturday. "Their biggest problem was a lack of scholarship on their part."

Surfrider members and Barile have criticized NOAA's report as more damage control for Brevard County and the port than a valid technical review. Surfrider is calling for the county to improve sewage systems to remove enough nitrogen from sewage to protect near-shore ecology; to encourage more water reuse and conservation; and to expand sewer lines to the south beaches.

The group also wants the port to create an agreement with cruise ships to force them to dump wastewater beyond 14 miles and have the two gambling ships pump their sewage out at port.

"We must first acknowledge that there is a problem," Gordon said.

By the numbers
There are two types of water discharged by ships operating out of Port Canaveral, black water or sewage and gray water or dishwater, shower water and other wastewater.

241,825: Number of gallons of black water or sewage the seven cruise ships at Port Canaveral discharge offshore each week.
26,600: Gallons of black water discharged offshore by Port Canaverals two gaming vessels each week.
268,425: Total gallons of sewage discharged by Brevards cruise and gaming vessels offshore each week.
400,000: Total gallons sewage, dishwater, shower water and other wastewater off Brevard every day.

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