Algae blooms return to St. Lucie River; Lake Okeechobee discharges will make them stay

Tyler Treadway | Treasure Coast Newspapers

Blue-green algae blooms are starting to show up in the St. Lucie River again, particularly in the South Fork, where water discharged from Lake Okeechobee is dumped into the river.

The blooms that started in early June, just days after the discharges started, seemed to go on hiatus a couple of weeks ago. In fact, when Martin County got state grant money to clean up blooms early this month, officials couldn't find a bloom to clean up.

More: Blooms dissipating; county searches for spots to clean

The Ashley family in Palm City can point them to one.

Never left

The algae in a small canal off the South Fork behind the family's home on Bittern Street has been blooming — and reeking — since June, "ever since the Lake Okeechobee releases started," said Juliet Ashley.

The only break came about three weeks ago when Ashley's husband, Brett, ran a boat in the canal to let the propeller break up the bloom.

"Maybe you're not supposed to do that," Juliet Ashley said, "but the smell was so horrific we couldn't have survived otherwise."

You're not supposed do that, as it stirs up the algae and can put toxins in the air.

In the past few days, Ashley said, "the blue patches have come back."

The sky-blue patches sometimes seen on thick blooms indicate some of the algae cells are dying and losing their chlorophyll, much like tree leaves that turn bright colors as they die in the autumn.

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It's ba-a-ack

The Riverland Mobile Home Park marina along the South Fork of the St. Lucie River was one of the first sites in Stuart to get an algae bloom in June.

The algae "let up for a while," said park groundskeeper Tom Nolin. "It wasn't so bad the first week or so in August. But since last weekend, it's been back and it's looked like this."

"This" is a mostly solid sheet of green slime that can be seen coming in from the South Fork at the south end of the marina, building up around docked boats and in still water and then exiting back into the river at the north end of the facility.

"That's what's saving us," Nolin said, pointing to sheets of algae leaving the marina on an outgoing tide. "If we didn't have a way for the algae to get out, it would be really thick in here."

In the early morning calm Tuesday, Nolin said, wide stands of algae could be seen "all across the river. It's thicker in the river than I've seen it all year."

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Keep coming

As long as water is being discharged from Lake Okeechobee, expect the blooms to keep coming as well, said Ed Phlips, an algae expert at the University of Florida.

"The discharges control the situation," Phlips said. "Without the discharges, there's a balancing act of water coming into the estuary from canals and other sources, and water flushed out the (St. Lucie) Inlet. But when you've got all that water, some of it containing algae, coming from the lake, you're going to have blooms."

A satellite image taken Friday shows algae covering about half of Lake O's open water, with thick blooms on the eastern side near the Port Mayaca Lock and Dam, where lake water is discharged toward the St. Lucie River.

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