Water Pollution

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating an oil spill at Port Manatee that caused over 19,000 gallons of polluted water. With a lot of unknowns, environmentalists are calling for more transparency into details of the spill.

The Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

Florida’s estuaries once teemed with clams, oysters and other bivalves that helped keep waters clean and seagrasses healthy. By the mid-20th century, only a fraction of the state’s vast shellfish beds and reefs remained. Can a small clam make a big difference in serious water pollution hotspots like the Indian River Lagoon?

For a century, the glass bottom boat tours at Wakulla Springs celebrated Florida’s seemingly endless depths of clean, clear water. With the water too murky to see through the glass, the boats are no longer running regularly — a symbol of the pollution plaguing the state’s freshwater and the cascade of consequences to come.

New research finds that human pollution influences the severity of red tides more directly than scientists previously understood. The connection sheds light on the need for better water-quality monitoring statewide — and ultimately, to reduce the nutrient pollution flowing into Florida’s waterways.

After decades of pollution suffocated Tampa Bay and killed half its seagrass and much of its marine life, unprecedented political cooperation and hundreds of science-guided projects brought the estuary back to life. Tampa Bay became a symbol for the success of the Clean Water Act of 1972, but seagrasses and fish have begun to die again.

The city of Tampa unveiled the $565,000 vessel In July, after two years of searching for the most efficient way to clean up local waterways.

Flooded streets have become such a way of life in South Florida that most people wade right through the puddles. Sometimes, when the ponds are a bit deeper, they even pull out kayaks, paddleboards or wakeboards.

The study by the Environmental Integrity Project analyzed biennial pollution reports sent by states to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Sarasota, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties spilled more than nine million gallons of wastewater from sewage plants in 2020.

They intend to prevent the injection of hundreds of millions of gallons of polluted wastewater from the Piney Point phosphate plant into the underground aquifer.

Many of Florida’s springs are at risk, largely from a combination of reduced water flow and increased pollution.