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It will take a village to heal Old Tampa Bay

Oldsmar officials have complained for years about the deepening layer of muck on the bottom of Old Tampa Bay, generally the portion of the bay north of the Gandy Bridge. Now they are joined by Safety Harbor officials. Representatives from both cities met last month to discuss ways to bring attention to the decline of the north end of the bay. They decided to ask their city managers to organize a meeting with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Safety Harbor Mayor Pam Corbino also suggested that they write letters to their legislators.

They need to think bigger than that if they want to avoid mere repetition of a similar exercise in 2003.

That year, officials and experts from local and state governments got together with the Agency on Bay Management to discuss the pollution and sediment turning Old Tampa Bay, particularly the part north of the Courtney Campbell causeway, into a shallow, murky lake with a bottom of sticky, smelly, black mud.

One expert at the meeting shared some statistics that were alarming. In the 1950s, he said, 380 tons of suspended solids or particles flowed into the bay each year because of stormwater runoff from the land. In 2003, he said, the number was expected to be 1,400 tons. The amount of nitrogen in the water had tripled.

Experts at the meeting noted that they needed much more information to understand the causes of Old Tampa Bay's woes.

Now, almost three years later, here we go again. Oldsmar officials are again sounding the alarm, and so is Safety Harbor - the two Pinellas cities most directly affected by the extreme decline in the upper end of the bay. Soon another meeting of experts and officials will be convened.

If Oldsmar and Safety Harbor want results this time, they need to build a bigger coalition of concerned groups and agencies and bring them into the conversation now. It was that kind of coalition, well organized and working hard for years, that eventually brought attention and results to Tampa Bay. The larger bay's health has improved, and sea grass and wildlife populations are growing.

Oldsmar and Safety Harbor need to convince other Pinellas local governments that Old Tampa Bay's ill health affects the entire region. Clearwater, for example, has as much to lose from a dead north bay as Oldsmar and Safety Harbor. St. Petersburg could feel the impact in areas around Feather Sound and Weedon Island.

And the effort to cast a wide net for support should not be confined to the western side of Old Tampa Bay. Indeed, Tampa and Hillsborough County have been struggling to respond to the complaints of residents along the eastern side of Old Tampa Bay that their canals are too clogged with silt to navigate at low tide and that the bay's condition obviously is declining.

Environmental groups played a big role in the campaign to restore Tampa Bay. They also should be enlisted in the effort to restore Old Tampa Bay.

Theories abound for causes of the problems in the waterway. Oldsmar Mayor Jerry Beverland says the upper bay's clear water and white sand beaches disappeared in the 1970s soon after the Lake Tarpon Outfall Canal was built to control flooding around Lake Tarpon. The freshwater lake now drains into Old Tampa Bay when water levels get too high. Other people have other theories, including the massive development around the north bay that causes polluted rainwater to flow directly into the bay instead of percolating into the ground; inadequate sediment traps on streams and culverts that carry stormwater to the bay; the presence of causeways that disrupt tidal flows and flushing; and too much fertilizer and pesticides making their way into the bay.

No one knows which of those causes is primary, if any, just as no one knows what it will take or how much it will cost to restore Old Tampa Bay. We can say with certainty, however, that it will take many years and a lot of effort by multitudes of concerned people to address the problem.

[Last modified January 11, 2006, 00:41:19]