To the editor:

During the recent town meeting held at the Sanibel Community House where the topic was touted as Florida water quality issues, very few questions were asked about these ongoing problems. When asked why the largest polluters in the state are not being held responsible for the continued release of phosphorous and nitrogen runoff from agricultural fields into Lake Okeechobee, Mr. Donalds’ answer was that you can’t go back in time and penalize a company for practices that have been accepted for decades, but are now known to be harmful. Mr. Donalds’ response ignores what is fair and disregards most of the history of holding corporations and individuals accountable for the harm they have done to others.

Under Mr. Donalds’ reasoning Johnson and Johnson would never have been sued in a class action suit for ovarian cancer victims from their baby powder products, and the tobacco industry wouldn’t have been sued in a class action suit for misleading the public about their product and lung cancer risks. Moreover, the state of Florida has sued HRK, the company responsible for the Piney Point Reservoir leak for damages and cleanup costs from the discharges of millions of gallons of phosphorous waste water from the defunct Piney Point phosphate mining operation. This leak was detected in March of 2021 and contributed to in a large red tide bloom and massive fish kills in the Tampa Bay area.

Moreover, a recent study conducted by the University of Florida, Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and Sarasota Bay Estuary Program has provided further evidence that the discharges of man-made nutrient pollution (septic, agricultural, and residential) from the Kissimmee River basin into Lake Okeechobee can be directly linked to increases in harmful algal blooms. 1 This is the first study to definitively identify the blue green algae in Lake Okeechobee as being the same organism growing in the waters of Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Sanibel.

Furthermore, The Florida Department of Health has recommended the increased monitoring and phasing out of septic systems, as has the Florida Blue-Green Algae Task Force. Why are we allowing the new plans for the Sanibel causeway restoration to include putting in permanent bathrooms on Causeway Island A with septic? Sanibel has a moratorium on septic, but Lee County does not.

Simple and inexpensive solutions are available for adding physical filtration to residential and commercial land into communal waterways. Most HOAs like mine here in Fort Myers, as well as golf courses across the state have planted native littoral plants around retention ponds to help filter nutrient laden runoff from lawns and prevent algal blooms.

So, Mr. Donalds, I respectfully ask you again. Why do you allow the large agricultural companies to continue business as usual? Why not require them to clean up their own mess before it gets to Lake Okeechobee? Why do you make the taxpayers pick up the entire bill for fixing this problem, while letting the large industries off the hook?

1. Nitrogen-enriched discharges from a highly managed watershed intensify red tide (Karenia brevis) blooms in southwest Florida – Science of The Total Environment Volume 827, 25 June 2022, 154149.

Leslie Turner

Fort Myers