blue-green algae

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.

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.

We are all connected by the environment we share. The Earth is our home. This is the space where we share the environmental stories that caught our attention this week in Florida and beyond.

We are all connected by the environment we share. The Earth is our home. This is the space where we share the environmental stories that caught our attention this week in Florida and beyond.

A dog named Bella died after being exposed to toxic blue-green algae water on the C-51 canal in West Palm Beach.

During the 2021 Annual Florida Legislative Session, state lawmakers passed a pair of bills aimed at expanding protections for landowners. The measures, currently awaiting Governor Ron DeSantis’ signature, authorize property owners to file lawsuits against government entities over local land-use regulations, even if the property owners have no formal development plans that would be impacted.Smart-growth advocacy organizations like 1,000 Friends of Florida say the bills could serve as a weaponization of the Bert Harris Act that could prevent local governments from imposing smart-growth regulations that would undermine the state’s coastal resiliency efforts.We'll take a closer look and explore the current state of toxic red tide and blue-green algae blooms in Southwest Florida.

We are all connected by the environment we share. The Earth is our home. This is the space where we share the environmental stories that caught our attention this week, in Florida and beyond.

Scientists think they've found a way to starve the cyanobacteria of a key nutrient it needs to grow.

The 2018 blue-green algae bloom that filled much of Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee River, and its estuary with thick, green, toxic, algae left no…

The documentary Toxic Puzzle tells the story of an ethnobotanist named Paul Cox who has spent years trying to track down links between toxins produced by…