Storms of Toxic Wasteland Brewing In Florida
Florida, the flat swamp land with beaches, golf courses, and retirement homes, and that giant alternate universe we call Disney World, or is there much more to the subtropical paradise? Florida is not just one big swamp with a few nice beaches, it is made up of about eighty different ecosystems that are teeming with life all of which are interdependent on one another. Many of these ecosystems are not found anywhere else on the globe. Now there are Florida swamps, but there is also mangroves, springs, marshes, coral reefs, estuaries, pinelands and scrubs. Let’s not leave out the everglades which spans about two million aces, and not only provides a habit for wildlife, plants and microorganisms, it also sucks up a lot of carbon dioxide, helping to reduce global warming.
With this beauty there is also valuable resources, resources which feed mans greed, leading to the destruction of the balance and life of the ecosystems. The current situation with cyanobacteria flowing from Lake Okeechobee, and excessive K. Brevis bloom in the gulf is a strong visual of what human’s greed for the land can result in. But there is much more going on than the stench and fish kills. So, let’s not waste this current state of awareness some Floridians are experiencing as a result of all the visual death and destruction. What kind of storms are the greed of man brewing in Florida?
The most popular storm is the Lake Okeechobee Storm, and it is an intense storm that wreaks havoc and destruction through much of south Florida’s ecosystems. Going through the middle of Florida is the Kissimmee river that flows into lake Okeechobee, the largest freshwater lake in Florida. Prior to development of large agricultural land, and suburbia, Lake Okeechobee flowed down into the everglades. But because of mans greed, Herbert Hoover Dike was built to change the natural flow. This change in water flow is starving the everglades of fresh water, slowly killing the ecosystems. Another aspect to this area of Florida are the cattle farms that line the Kissimmee river and feed it with excess nutrients and pollution, causing an imbalance of cyanobacteria in Lake Okeechobee. The bright green cyanobacteria lake water then gets released into the Caloosahatchee river that flows west into to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and into the St Lucie River that flows east into the Atlantic Ocean adding to the other storms brewing in the Florida ecosystems.
To the north west of the Okeechobee storm, there is the Bone Valley storm, known as phosphate mining. Phosphate mining is a catastrophic storm, yet many Floridians have no clue about it. Phosphate mining is contaminating our water, the plant life around the mines, wildlife, the food chain, our life. Phosphate mining also takes water from the aquifer to dilute the radioactive wastewater , so it can be dumped into creeks, in the amount of about 70 million gallons a day which eventually reaches Charlotte harbor and the Gulf of Mexico which then becomes nutrients for K. brevis and other harmful algae blooms. In 2016 a gypsum stack, the radioactive byproduct of phosphate mining created a sink hole which leaked more that 200 million gallons of contaminated wastewater into the aquifer.
Then we have the over development and deep well injection site storms that are found all over the state. Much of Florida was almost like a slow-moving river system, and wetlands which needed to be dredged to build all the lovely HOA’s, golf courses, malls, farm land, Disney and suburbia. The dredging of the land and the changing of the water flow leads to pollution and ecosystem destruction. Floridians love their nonnative grass lawns that require constant watering ,fertilizer and herbicides , not thinking twice about the runoff pollution and draining of the aquifer. Florida also currently has over 180 deep well injection sites, which are not as safe as once believed. Many of these sites are likely affecting the water quality of the aquifer which is already struggling due to population increase and big industry such as Mosaic.
Mans greed and disconnection from the earth has created several environmental storms that have not only created one perfect storm in Florida, but also around the globe. It’s not just Florida that is being turned into a toxic wasteland for the love of power and money. At what point will humans see the storms that we are creating, and see that this is not a sustainable way to live? At what point will humanity see that we are not separate from the earth, but part of it and we are dependent on the organic balance of mother earth? Lets not waste the suffering of the ecosystems and wildlife we are witnessing, lets use it as catalyst to make change. Let’s create a society in which technology and nature are in harmony.
References
Lusgarden.A(2012,21.june ).InjectionWells:ThePoisonBeneathUs. Retrieved from https://www.propublica.org/article/injection-wells-the-poison-beneath-us
Our santa fe river (2016, June )Danger of Phosphate mines retrieved from https://oursantaferiver.org/dangers-of-phosphate-mines/
Sunsential ( 2016,July) Algae problem stems from decades of Lake Okeechobe pollution . retrieved from http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-lake-pollution-20160708-story.html
Williams ,C (2016, july .17) History of flushing lake Okeechobee dates back to the 1800’s retrieved from https://www.news-press.com/story/life/2016/07/17/history-flushing-lake-okeechobee-everglades-cynthia-williams-tropicalia/86930340/
