Algae Crisis

Hurricane Ian’s landfall on Sept. 28 last year helped foster a red-tide-a-thon that lasted eight months. Now there have been seven blue-green algae health advisories in Lee County alone since May

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is now accepting requests for water-quality grants from local governments, academic institutions, and nonprofits. More than $390 million is available to plan and put into practice projects that protect Florida’s water resources.

A group of Republican state lawmakers met at the Riverside Community Center in Fort Myers to discuss millions of dollars earmarked to clean up the Caloosahatchee River while the Florida Department of Health was issuing an advisory for a significant blue-green algae outbreak that had formed in the water behind them.

The Centers for Disease Control is enlisting willing residents who live along canals in Cape Coral or the Caloosahatchee River in a study to discover how much blue-green algae can effect humans.

It was a classic case of blue-green algae in a canal in Waterway Estates: a thick coating of slimy green bacteria, and blue organic matter swirled together atop the water.A smell somewhere between rotten eggs and a backed-up sewer was wafting in the air.A small boat pulled up and a pair of nonchalant guys started tossing out something resembling fine beach sand — like two guys fertilizing their lawns without a hand-spreader.The tiny crystals landed on the matted algae – and nothing.The men spreading a hydrogen-peroxide-based formula created by BlueGreen Water Technologies, a Fort Lauderdale-based company, were out to prove they have invented a way to make noxious algae blooms just disappear.By extinguishing themselves, one-by-one. As in a mass suicide on a single-cell level.

Marine scientists with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation are updating its crucial water-quality monitoring system in Southwest Florida for the first time since its launch in 2007. The SCCF’s marine lab is busy installing a new generation of sensors in their “river, estuary, and coastal observing network,” which they dubbed “RECON.”

The Florida Department of Health in Lee County issued a health advisory Friday warning people and their pets to stay away from the area due to “the presence of harmful blue-green algal toxins,” the agency wrote. “The public should exercise caution in and around Franklin Lock.”The tropical system was taking aim at Fort Myers on Friday evening, gaining strength, and was expected to become the first named tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.The Army Corps was closing all its locks and dams on Lake Okeechobee to secure the 142-mile-long dike ringing the lake. The South Florida Water Management District was doing the same with the locks and dams it controls.

Florida lawmakers adjourned the state’s annual legislative session, Saturday, with an historic $91.1 billion budget for the coming fiscal year. Although…

This Friday US Congressman Francis Rooney will host a roundtable discussion at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida on the health impacts of Harmful Algal…

Florida Gulf Coast University announced its first partnership for its new Water School on Thursday. It’s official. Mote Marine Laboratory and FGCU have…