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PUBLIC REVIEW MEETING COMMENTS February
12 2007
INTRODUCTION In these short comments I very briefly focus on what is already known about the extent and causes of reef degradation in Southeast Florida, and what needs to be done to clean up the water to protect the little that is left. I also analyze all current SEFCRI Project Reports according to the degree to which they take action to solve the major known threats to coral reefs, or merely talk about them. No funding is going towards actual solutions, while much is being spent to “find out if there is a problem”, decades after this was well known. LONG TERM DECLINE OF SOUTH FLORIDA REEFS More than 50 years ago, my father got a young man named Jerry Greenberg started on photographing the reefs of South Florida. Greenberg wanted to know what he could do to protect the reefs from the degradation that was already clearly visible, and my father showed him how to document the changes photographically. Greenberg’s amazing photographs tell the entire story, far more eloquently than any study that could be done now possibly could, showing a marvelous world of which almost no trace now remains. The only argument among those who knew what these reefs were like then is whether they are “only” 95% or 99% gone, and whether beach dredge-filling, sewage, global warming, or new diseases killed the most corals. All the nearshore reefs of Southeast Florida were buried and killed by dredge-fill dumping of sand on the beaches, except for the only segment that was never done, from Port Everglades to Lauderdale by the Sea. But this sole surviving stretch, with the best reefs left in North America, not only STILL has no protected status or management plan, it has been selected for destruction by a dredging project that has been approved by every single county, state, and federal agency with jurisdiction over it. SEFCRI and USCRTF have repeatedly refused to act on public requests to support designation of protected status for this reef or call for its protection from dredging. CLEANING UP WATER QUALITY TO SAFE LEVELS The SEFCRI public awareness campaigns have clearly identified that most Floridians regard dirty water as their number one coastal concern. Because SEFCRI/USCRTF has refused to support the application of ecologically sound water quality standards designed to protect coral reefs from algae overgrowth, or to support cleaning up the sewage outflows that are causing algae and bacterial slime blooms all over the remaining reefs of South Florida (instead funding “research” to find out if sewage actually has any impacts elsewhere!), it has been left to a small but courageous non-profit group, Palm Beach Reef Rescue, to get the first of six major sewage outfalls closed. We call for immediate action to enforce the Clean Water Act and shut down the remaining five outfalls that continue to spew hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage a day onto the reefs. We call not only for the sewage to stop being directly pumped into the coastal zone via ocean outfalls, but also a stop to the indirect flow of sewage into the sea via deep well injection and canals. And in particular we call on the responsible agencies to actually CLEAN UP the nutrients in the waste waters instead of simply dumping them someplace else. It is now clear that there is no place where these wastes can be dumped without causing harm. The Everglades Restoration Plan calls for pumping surface waters through the Everglades, but both the Everglades National Park and the Miccosukkee Indian Reservation will not accept them because of excessive nutrient pollution. Lake Okeechobee can no longer be used because waste pumping killed the fisheries there, and pumping it out the Caloosahatchee and Saint Lucie Rivers have triggered massive red tides on both coasts. Because there is no other place to put these polluted waters, they are now pumped into the ground or into the canals, where they are killing the coral reefs once they reach the sea. We call on the public agencies responsible for protecting the health of coastal and inland waters and ecosystems to treat the sewage to a level that removes the excessive nutrients from the waters and recycles the waters and nutrients on land. Technologies to do exactly this are readily available, but we are just not using them. Moreover, these alternatives would require far less area and expenditure, and produce valuable fuels and fertilizers while cleaning up both the reefs and the Everglades. Magnegas® Technology, invented by Dr. R. Santilli of Tarpon Springs, converts sewage into clean burning hydrogen fuel, and in combination with Powell Electro-coagulation® Technology, breaks down and precipitates all pollutants, producing sterile water suitable for aquifer recharge and solid fertilizer. Huge settling ponds and sludge dewatering fields are not needed, an important benefit in an overcrowded South Florida that will be subjected to increased flooding from sea level rise. South Florida’s dirty waters are no longer an issue that can be hidden or passed off to somebody else. We once again call on SEFCRI/USCRTF to ensure that all of its member agencies live up to their responsibilities and refuse to permit actions that violate the Clean Water Act and the Coral Protection Act. We ask them to directly solve the problems by reducing and eliminating the known stresses that have already killed all but the last surviving Florida corals, and which threaten all the few that still remain, especially sewage and agricultural nutrients, dredging, global warming, and new diseases. ANALYSIS OF SEFCRI PROJECT EFFECTIVENESS Ranking all the SEFCRI projects, we find them seriously wanting from both tactical and strategic viewpoints. This is because they focus on reinventing the wheel and symbolic steps rather than taking existing knowledge into account, and because they do not include genuine problem solving projects. Alternative approaches are urged to solve or reduce the critical factors known to be killing coral reefs and fisheries. 47 SEFCRI Project Summaries were provided at this Public Review Meeting to assess their progress towards improving SE Florida coral reefs. I have categorized all projects into five major categories according to the degree to which they address solving the major threats to Florida reefs: 25 (53.14%) are aimed to IDENTIFY potential problems 16 (34.04%) are aimed at PUBLIC RELATIONS OR EDUCATION 5 (10.64%) are RESEARCH that might be useful to identify future problems 1 (2.12%) is MONITORING of a known problem 0 (0.00%) SOLVE PROBLEMS by reducing known stresses or restoration If we award a “problem solving” letter grade from for each of these categories, increasing in the order listed above, the mean grade for the entire SEFCRI Program would be a D- or an E. The Projects are very poorly chosen if they are intended to actually solve the causes of the accelerating decline of South Florida’s coral reefs. NONE of the projects take steps to reduce any of the known threats that are killing corals, or to restore the damage that has already been done. ONE monitors the flow of deep well injection wastes into the sea, the only known problem for which any direct monitoring is proposed. Direct enforcement of the Clean Water Act, establishment of ecologically sound water quality standards to protect coral reefs, shutting down the sewage outfalls, mapping the nutrient inputs to the reef, etc. are not on the list (these have all been repeatedly proposed in previous public comments to SEFCRI by a large variety of organizations and individuals, but SEFCRI has consistently failed to act on any of them). FIVE projects do research to try to develop indicators of stress in corals, which might be useful in the future to identify stressed corals. OVER ONE THIRD of all SEFCRI funded projects are public relations and education steps, for example to prepare brochures to tell people that reefs are good so they should not hurt them. This is of course a good idea, but there is nothing new about any of the steps being taken, and repeated identical efforts in the past have failed to slow the destruction of the reefs. MORE THAN HALF of all SEFCRI projects are aimed at discussions to try to find out if there are problems in the reefs, whether the reefs are deteriorating, whether pollution might affect them, whether existing institutions are capable of saving corals broken up by ship groundings, etc. The bulk of these projects amount to reinventing the wheel, spending large amounts of money to talk about whether or not there might be a problem, but never either asking those who personally know the long term changes in the reefs about what actually happened and what caused it, or to solve the many reef problems like dredging and sewage that are already long understood. This is a backward strategic approach that has resulted in ineffective tactics. By starting all over again to find out from fresh if there is a problem, as if we did not already long know this, effective action is prevented or delayed. One year from now, The International Coral Reef Symposium will be held right here in Fort Lauderdale. Is the Coral Reef Task Force still planning to tell the thousands of coral reef researchers and managers from all over the world that we are still trying to find out if the reefs “might” have a problem? This is surely going to make all of those in charge of finding out look asleep at the switch! Or are we going to be in a position to show that we are already actively taking the steps we have long known we need to take to reduce the damage to reefs and restore the corals and fishes? Once again we call on SEFCRI to take the lead in funding projects to directly reduce the stresses killing South Florida reefs, restoring degraded reefs, and to accept that the only valid criteria for success are the degree to which the corals and fish populations are significantly restored, not the amount of money spent to make it appear that something is actually being done. Thomas J.
Goreau, PhD
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