The bayfront waters in Bradenton Beach are showing serious levels of pollution.
Bradenton Beach city commissioners reached consensus Feb. 20 to work with city engineer Lynn Burnett to conduct tests to identify the source of high levels of enterococcus — a bacteria commonly found in human and animal feces — in Sarasota Bay on Bay Drive South near Bridge Street.
Suncoast Waterkeeper, a nonprofit that tests water quality in 11 area locations, not including the public beaches monitored by the Florida Department of Health, tested the waters in the Bradenton Beach bayfront near the anchorage over two weeks in mid-February and found more than 24,000 colony-forming units of enterococci per liter in one sample. Other samples reached 1,670 and 4,884 cfu/L.
The first location sampled was at the dinghy dock adjacent to the Historic Bridge Street Pier. The next round of samples were taken from the same area, but 50 feet into the bay at the southern base of the pier and at a similar depth a short distance south along Bay Drive South.
The DOH regards enterococcus levels exceeding 70 cfu/L as unsafe for human contact and posts no-swim advisories if a public beach it monitors tests higher than the threshold.
Meanwhile, Bradenton Beach is required to conduct water quality tests near the pier twice a year to maintain the clams that have been seeded south of the pier in a living shoreline project by the city’s community redevelopment agency.
The motion approved Feb. 20 called for additional tests in the bay waters for enterococcus and escherichia coli, a type of bacteria found in human and animal intestines that can cause sickness.
“Anything we can do to help clean the waters, we’re going to do it,” Bradenton Beach Mayor John Chappie told The Islander Feb. 19. “We just want to find the source so we can take care of it.”
Chappie said city staff inspected the underside of the pier in the event there was a sewer leak that may have contributed to the high bacteria levels, but found nothing.
He said other factors may have led to the results, including bird feces or waste from boats in the anchorage.
Chappie said he spoke with Manatee County DOH environmental health director Tom Larkin about the state of Bradenton Beach waters, but hadn’t heard back as of Feb. 19.
Larkin told The Islander Feb. 19 that the DOH has jurisdiction over beaches involved in the Florida Healthy Beaches Program, which does not include the Bradenton Beach bayfront location tested by Suncoast.
The Bradenton Beach bayfront testing location is not a public beach but does include numerous docks — a city dock and private docks — near the city anchorage. The area remained open as of Feb. 21.
Larkin added the department is reaching out to other governmental agencies, including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, to address the high bacteria levels.
Suncoast Waterkeeper executive director Andre Mele told The Islander Feb. 20 that the CRA’s seeded clams were not at risk of being harmed by the enterococcus.
Mele said the high bacteria levels may be caused by bird feces washed from the pier or nearby docks, construction on Bridge Street or people living aboard their vessels in the nearby anchorage.
He added that some of the other 10 locations tested by the nonprofit resulted in bacteria levels which also exceeded the 70 cfu/L DOH threshold, but did not detail the locations. He said the worst results were found on the bayfront in Bradenton Beach.
That poop ain’t coming from the pelicans, boys, About time to listen to some words of wisdom and get those derelicts and those derelict boats out of there. Gonna end up being a lawsuit against the city and the county. How’d you like to be sitting outside at the Bridge Tender Inn enjoying and early evening meal looking at the water when the toilet paper and poop come rolling in. Come on Chappie, Come on Benac do something about this and stop with the B.S. ” Duh, I wonder what the source of all this poop is”