>>This week on NewsNight, Florida's foul smelling algal blooms worsen the state's made water quality a top priority.

So why does the problem persist?

Mosquito control crews work to prevent locally acquired malaria cases as infections continue in Sarasota County.

And a look at an Orlando Sentinel investigation into one four dioxane pollution in Seminole County.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort and welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

First tonight, the algal blooms that so often infest the waterways in some parts of Florida at this time of year.

The state has prioritized water quality spending and efforts have been underway for years to try to tackle the problem of foul smelling and sometimes even toxic blue green algae.

Florida's algal blooms are proving to be a stubborn foe and have worsened in recent years.

Much of the problem starts at Lake Okeechobee, where phosphorus based agricultural fertilizers and septic tank pollution have provided the nutrients to allow algae to thrive.

This is a view taken by NASA just last month, showing mats of blue green algae blanketing the lake.

Rainy season stirs up phosphorus pollution, making matters worse, and the effects of the rains from last year's hurricane season is expected to make 2023 a particularly bad year when water levels get too high in Lake Okeechobee.

The Army Corps of Engineers must release water into canals to protect the integrity of a dike that stops the lake from flooding surrounding areas.

The problem is releasing water towards the coast means algal blooms pop up in communities on both the Gulf and Atlantic sides of Florida.

Water used to flow freely from lake so out into the Everglades, replenishing Florida's famed river of grass.

But decades of ditching and diking to prevent that from happening, making way for agricultural and urban development have cost the environment dearly.

The DeSantis administration says it's prioritized Everglades restoration efforts and improving water quality.

This was the governor back in 2021.

>>Removing barriers to move water south benefits the Everglades and restoration of its critical ecosystem and helps to protect the Saint Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries from harmful discharges.

I'm proud of the progress we're seeing on these projects.

We're going to continue to pursue them and we're going to continue to go all the way through the finish line when we get all this stuff done.

>>But despite massive investment in restoration from both the state and federal government and the establishment of a blue green algae taskforce, algal blooms persist.

Environmental groups say efforts have fallen short and are calling for more to be done to prevent nutrient pollution.

All right.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, Matthew Peddie host of Florida Mtters on our sister station WUSF in Tampa.

Thanks so much for coming in, Matt, its been a minute.

Good to see you.

And Amy Green, she's a Florida based reporter for InsideClimate News.

Thanks for coming in, Amy.

>>Nice to see you.

>>Appreciate your time today, guys.

Amy, let me start with you on this one.

You wrote about algal blooms recently for InsideClimate News.

Give us a sort of broad overview, if you would, as to sort of why algal blooms persist despite all that work that's been done.

>>That's right.

So this is a really hard problem and there are a lot of complicated factors here.

The main problem is nutrient pollution, which you mentioned in your piece, and that is pollution that flows from fertilized front lawns in urban areas, agriculture operations where they use a lot of fertilizers and there's a lot of animal waste, sewage and septic systems.

And so all of these nutrients get into our waterways and they function in our waterways in the same way they function on our front lawns, which is that they make things grow.

Now, there's algae all the time in our waterways, but when those nutrients get in there, what can happen sometimes is one species will kind of take off and take over, and that's when we get what is called a harmful algae bloom and some of these harmful algae blooms are toxic.

And the situation in Lake Okeechobee, that situation is kind of front and center with this issue because all of our waterways are vulnerable to these harmful algae blooms.

But in Lake Okeechobee, there are water management procedures in place where during times of high water, that water needs to be discharged in an unnatural pattern east and west rather than south.

And that's how these - this nutrient pollution and these harmful algae blooms can spread to delicate estuaries and it can spread across the peninsula basically.

>>A lot of harm is being done whilst trying to help with another problem, I guess.

I mean, what are environmental groups kind of main concerns here?

And you wrote that some believe that not enough is being done or not the right things are being done.

>>Right.

So Governor Ron DeSantis ran his gubernatorial campaign in 2018, coincided with just these widespread, horrible toxic algae blooms that were really gripping the peninsula and so he made that issue a focus of his campaign.

And since he's been governor, he has made the environment and especially water quality and harmful algae blooms a priority of his administration.

And he's put a lot of money into Everglades restoration, mainly to address those problems in Lake Okeechobee that are intensifying the problem there.

And I would say some of the environmental groups would describe his work as groundbreaking.

You know, after several years of relative inaction on these issues, especially under the administration of his predecessor, Rick Scott, who is now one of our U.S. senators, but other environmental groups, I would say they think that really DeSantis is only scratching the surface here, that a lot of his programs really are only treating the symptoms of this problem, and they're not really addressing the cause, which is this nutrient pollution.

>>Interesting.

Matt, let me bring you in here.

I mean, your outlets over on the Gulf side and there's been some reporting on the flow of algae from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf.

I mean, how are local organizations kind of in coastal areas on that side of the state responding and there are other.

Are those blooms already appearing?

>>Yeah, There's been some reporting from WGCU in Fort Myers about how algae blooms are affecting the area there.

The latest reports are in Caloosahatchee and kind of around Saint Lucie and Cape Coral.

There are there are some algae blooms appearing there.

Essentially what these local organizations will do is they will advise the Army Corps of Engineers, you know, when to release water or not release water, as the case may be, because as you pointed out in your piece, there's quite a lot of algae already, you know, floating in that lake and reaching out to the coast is going to cause some pretty big problems.

It creates issues for seabirds and other marine animals as well.

There's been some reports of organizations having to kind of rehabilitate animals that have been affected by algae and people in central Florida remember that terrible kind of fish die offs from algae blooms back in 2016.

And you had organizations like Keep Brevard Beautiful, mobilizing folks to clean up the tons and tons of rotting fish.

So whenever these algae blooms happen, there is a lot of local effort to try and clean up the the after effects and help people get through it.

>>The state, Amy, has thrown a lot of money at Everglades restoration, at clean water initiatives, I think 1.6 billion right in the most recent budget.

Where is most of that money going and is it likely to make a difference to progress now?

>>I would say the focus of DeSantis's policy in that regard is a reservoir that just began construction south of Lake Okeechobee.

And DeSantis and others have described this reservoir as the crown jewel of Everglades restoration.

It's one of the biggest and most important projects in Everglades restoration, and to describe this reservoir as large would be putting it lightly.

I mean, this is the largest reservoir the US Army Corps of Engineers has ever constructed of its kind in the country.

And it's going to be a massive reservoir.

And it's it's it's intended to restore that more natural flow of water south.

And there's also components of the project that involve engineered wetlands that are aimed at cleansing the water of that nutrient pollution and improving water quality.

But again, some of the environmental groups have raised concerns about the way the reservoir is designed.

They say that it's going to be too deep.

Historically, the Everglades was a very shallow system.

And so they say, you know, it's not, you know, a natural you know, it doesn't emulate nature very well.

And they worry that the reservoir could provide another opportunity for toxic algae to bloom.

>>Interesting.

Matt, we mainly think of blue green algae here in central Florida, but red tide is also a persistent algae problem in the Gulf.

I mean, do we know if human activity is contributing to that, too?

>>Sure.

I mean, the good news about red tide this year is it hasn't been seen since, I believe late May interest in kind of southwest Florida.

There are some reports of background traces of red tide up in north west Florida.

But for now, things look okay on the red tide front as far as kind of how it occurs it is naturally occurring.

It blooms offshore, but when it gets closer to shore, it can feed on those nutrients that get into the water.

And I was talking to Tampa wildlife photographer Carlton Moore Jr recently this is part of a special series that we're running at WUSF called Our Changing State, about the changing state of Florida and-- >>It has a lot of changes.

>>Exactly how it's affecting the people who live here.

And his point was that all of the problems we see on the coast, whether it's, you know, water issues or even in the river systems and springs that's connected in some way to human activity further inland.

So his point was that if we need to protect our environment, we really have to think about how we do that as the population of Florida continues to grow.

>>Amy, you wrote about hurricane season.

I wanted to talk about this because we're sort of coming into the depths of hurricane season.

You wrote how the severe hurricane season we got last year, particularly with Hurricane Ian, might affect the algal blooms that we get in 2023.

How so?

>>That's, that's the reason a lot of people are worried about toxic algae blooms this summer.

And it's going back to that nutrient pollution.

You know, Hurricane Ian dropped just a monumental amount of rain on the peninsula and as that water has drained off the landscape, it carries with it all of those all of those nutrients, all of that nutrient pollution and that goes into the waterways and that can feed those harmful algae blooms.

And then again, you know, during times of high water, the US Army Corps of Engineers is forced to do those discharges east and west.

And so people are watching the lake level in Lake Okeechobee very closely, worried that, you know, with all of the nutrients that are in the lake because of Ian.

And we began the summer with the lake at a higher level than last year.

People are worried that those discharges will send that nutrient pollution to the delicate estuaries.

>>Which is not what you want.

Matt, I want to wrap up this part by talking about what's happening in Congress, which isn't much, right?

I mean, a bipartisan group from Florida's congressional delegations introduced a bill that would describe algal blooms or allowed them to be covered by disaster declarations.

But that hasn't gone anywhere.

Right.

And how would it help?

>>Well, it would help by doing exactly that.

Essentially, it would treat algal blooms as a disaster like a hurricane or a tornado.

And it would make it easier for the governor of a state like the governor of Florida, for example, to receive federal assistance and sponsored by Byron Donalds, who is you know, his constituency is in that area which is affected by-- >>Southwest Florida.

>>Algal blooms.

So hes supporting it does have bipartisan support, but as you point out, hasn't gone anywhere.

Need some support from senators in Florida as well, to, to move forward.

>>Well it's certainly an issue that's going to persist, it seems for a while until we can find solutions to it.

You can find a link to Amy's reporting on this issue for InsideClimate News on our website.

You'll also find links to the Blue Green Algae Task Force and the Florida Algal Bloom Dashboard there as well.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

All right.

Next tonight, health officials in central Florida are pressing efforts to tackle mosquito borne illnesses.

The Florida Department of Health has issued mosquito borne illness alerts in some counties, including Sarasota, where several cases of locally acquired malaria have been reported in recent weeks.

The last time someone contracted the illness inside the US was about 20 years ago.

Krystel Knowles has been looking into efforts to prevent more cases.

>>Fortunately, we haven't had any here in Polk County, but we still have to be mindful of of the threat and the potential of something going on.

>>Polk County mosquito control manager Jackson Mosley and his team are continuously working on keeping the mosquito population under control.

These insects are the perfect carriers of Zika, West Nile, dengue and malaria that are transmittable to people.

Currently, several counties, including Polk, are under mosquito borne illness advisories, but three counties are under alert, including Sarasota, less than 100 miles away, where several locally acquired malaria cases have been found.

>>Malaria is not a typical virus, so it is with a parasite.

So we make the perfect host and we have the mosquitoes here to do it.

That's the unfortunate part.

We have the correct species.

>>Polk County has about 47 mosquito species and Florida has close to 90 different species, many of which play a role in the transmission of mosquito borne illnesses.

Mosley says reducing their breeding environment while in the larvae stage is the most effective way of preventing the spread of diseases.

And he says his team is constantly keeping an eye out for population increases.

>>We set out traps throughout the county and we monitor the species composition.

What species is most active and things like that.

We also treat aerial.

So we have a helicopter.

We are moving towards a drone pretty soon, but our helicopter does aerial treatments and it can get wide, wide, wider areas than what we can do with trucks.

>>Experts say that malaria spreading across the state via a mosquito is not a huge concern because their lifespan is about 15 days to 30 days at most and they can only travel about a mile or so.

But what is a concern, according to Brevard county officials, is someone who's infected, traveling across the state and bringing that disease to the county.

>>We're taking precautions just in case it does.

More than likely, if it was to come here, it would be spread by somebody, a person basically traveling over here, getting bitten by a local mosquito, and it's spreading.

So the mosquito itself with flying just mostly about a mile, give or take, it would take quite a while.

>>Brevard County mosquito control director Joseph Faella is always on the lookout for the next mosquito borne illness.

After all, Florida is surrounded by water with hundreds of lakes and countless retention ponds, creating the perfect environment for the buzzing, biting insects to thrive.

>>Basically, there are always mosquito borne illnesses to worry about.

Malaria is just another one.

Now, of course, malaria is a serious one.

But we also have some other serious local diseases.

So there are a lot of mosquito borne illnesses that we worry about every day.

>>Krystel Knowles reporting there.

Okay, Matt, let me come to you first on this.

Your colleague Stephanie Colombini at WUSF talked to someone, right, who got malaria in Sarasota County recently.

What do we know about how it affects people?

>>Sure.

Yeah.

And kudos to my colleague Stephanie, who talked to Hannah Heath.

She's a 39 year old woman who contracted malaria.

She initially thought she had food poisoning because a lot of the symptoms initially were the same.

She had vomiting, headache, just felt pretty lousy.

But after a few days, she realized she wasn't getting better.

In fact, she was getting dehydrated.

So she went to hospital.

While she was there, she was diagnosed with malaria.

They got her the medication she needed.

She spent a few days there.

They discharged her after that and sent her home with some more medication.

Because the thing about malaria is it can kind of lurk in some of your internal organs and come back.

So you can't just kind of it's not a one and done sort of situation.

You have to be pretty serious about how you treat it.

But the good news is, obviously, if you catch it, it is treatable.

>>Well, we'll put a link up to Stephanie's reporting on our site.

I mean, we just saw how two central Florida counties are trying to prevent mosquito borne illnesses in our region.

Sarasota is in WUSFs patch.

What's being done there?

>>Sure.

Well, the thing is that the mosquito that carries this kind of malaria is called Anopheles.

It doesn't have a huge range that flies about a mile, I think, which-- >>Yeah, Krystel mentioned that.

>>For a mosquito is quite a long way.

So, yes, but it makes it easier to pinpoint where the mosquitoes are coming from.

So when somebody comes down with an infection, they're able to target that area.

They spend a few days bombarding it with insecticide to to try and knock out the malaria.

They also go and make sure that they're putting, you know, chemicals into standing water to kill the the juvenile malaria juvenile mosquitoes, rather.

And it's an education program too, warning people in the area to cover up, apply bug spray and just be careful.

>>Amy, is there any evidence that the hot weather that's blanketing the U.S. this year and potentially climate change are having an impact on the spread of malaria?

>>Yes, Climate change is expected to enhance the spread of diseases like malaria because it's increasing the range of mosquitoes.

And so scientists do worry that people that have not been exposed to these diseases in the past could now be exposed.

>>And locally acquired cases, though, are still pretty few and far between and very rare, like with before this cluster about 20 years or so.

I mean, what are experts saying about whether people need to be concerned about mosquitoes given the sort of newly locally acquired infections?

>>Right.

So scientists are not too worried about a major outbreak in the U.S.

They point out that these cases in Florida, in Texas don't seem to be connected.

And also, there are safe and effective vaccines available in Africa that could be made available in the U.S. >>Yeah, the University of South Florida.

Matt, it's one of the organizations behind the Global Malaria Dashboard, which will also put a link up to that tracks illnesses around the globe.

How does that technology work over there?

>>It's kind of crowdsourcing, so you can sort of think of it almost like Waze but for mosquitoes.

Essentially they're inviting people to download one of, I think, three apps onto their phone.

They can take photographs of the offending mosquitoes, these invasive species that carry diseases, upload those photos and then the scientists use A.I.

to help them identify the mosquitoes and sort of figure out where they are and what they're doing.

So it's basically using the crowd or the wisdom of the crowd, so to speak, to, you know, increase their surveillance of these dangerous mosquitoes.

>>During the Zika outbreak a few years ago, I did a story about how scientists were looking to use mosquitoes themselves in the fight against that virus.

People sort of referred to it as genetically modified mosquitoes.

Is that part of the strategy against malaria as well?

>>Yeah.

There is a company that is working on a genetically modified mosquito, essentially.

They're trying to use some DNA or a genetic modification for using genes from another animal because the mosquitoes are affected by malaria.

So they have to use some DNA material from another animal that is affected by malaria.

They introduce that into the mosquito and they're essentially trying to make these mosquitoes inhospitable to malaria.

The results, they say, are promising.

And the next stage is to do a field trial of this.

There are some people concerned about it, of course, as they were in that earlier story you referred to, worried about introducing these genetically modified species into the wild.

But the early results do have some promise.

>>Well, we all hope.

I think I can speak for all of us here.

We all hope that those efforts are successful.

You can find links to the Florida Department of Health's latest report on mosquito borne illnesses, along with the USF mosquito dashboard on our website.

It's at wucf.org/newsnight.

Meanwhile, be sure to join the conversation on social media.

We're at WUCF TV on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

All right.

I want to thank our panel this week.

Amy Green from InsideClimate News, thank you so much for coming in Amy.

Really appreciate your expertise as usual.

And Matthew Peddie from WUSF in Tampa, Thanks so much for coming in.

Matt.

>>Thank you.

>>Thanks so much for your time, guys.

All right.

Finally tonight, a reporting series from our friends at the Orlando Sentinel.

The paper has found that for decades, tens of thousands of people in northwest Seminole County, Lake Mary and Sanford have been drinking water containing varying concentrations of a toxic industrial chemical.

The EPA says one four dioxane is likely to cause liver and kidney cancer, as well as other illnesses, categorizing it as a contaminant of emerging concern.

I spoke recently with the lead reporter on the series Kevin Spear.

>>In West Lake Mary, near Interstate-Four.

There's a defunct factory that was in operation from 1968 to 2003 and owned by lots of companies, Siemens Corporation, General Dynamics and others.

And they made components for telephone network systems.

And in in that manufacturing, they had to clean them.

So they used a number of chemicals, solvents, including one four dioxin in 2001 that chemical and others were discovered in a newly drilled water well off Lake Mary and also in the ground and water around that factory.

The factory owners have really never said that it's our fault that it's in the ground.

They've said it may be their fault, but they've denied liability for any of that so far.

It wasn't until 2013 when the US EPA said to all water providers around the country, Please check for these few dozen chemicals.

There was a list of them, but one of them was one four dioxane.

And it was from that that Lake Mary Sanford and Seminole County, a part of Seminole County, made their first discovery of one four dioxane in their drinking water.

>>What a lot of people want to know is whether it's dangerous or not.

There's some disagreement about that, right, its toxicity >>More than a decade ago, the US Environmental Protection Agency declared it as a likely that it would likely cause cancer a likely carcinogen.

But the research behind thats really dated and I think flimsy as well.

It goes back to the 1990s and to 2010 studies.

It involved guinea pigs, rats and mice.

And some of those studies are challenged as to their approach and accuracy.

So there is a study underway at Yale University right now that hopefully will really address some of these questions about human health.

They are going to look at humans rather than animals in this study.

>>What is its likely extent now?

>>The owners of the factory say not very far, but Sanford is a mile and a half away, is getting one four dioxin in its drinking water.

Well, so it hired two high end environmental consultants to investigate it.

And what they came up with is that it's highly probable that the chemical is spread from under the factory all the way to the north, to the city of Lake Sanford's water wells.

>>Talk about how the local utilities have been addressing this issue and also have they gotten much support?

>>I think there is a big missed missed opportunity here.

Back when the three utilities discovered one four dioxin in their water, they could have turned to each other and collaborated, joined forces in asking the state of Florida and federal authorities to take a closer look and help them out.

Instead, they went in very, very different directions.

Lake Mary was able to get the factory owners after many, many, many years to get them to build a very high tech water treatment plant that strips out one four dioxin.

Seminole County went radio silent and actually forgot about it.

Today they hadn't heard of it until I brought it up with them some months ago.

Sanford's known all along and they've done, I think, the most aggressive job and they pleaded with the state to take action and and really take on a full investigation and come up with answers for how to deal with this going forward.

Lake Mary and Sanford reached out to the Florida Department of Health and said, hey, is this a concern?

What should we do?

It took them years to come back with an answer.

And what they said basically was, yeah, you should be okay.

Those levels aren't that high.

And so there isn't a pressing concern as far as the chemical being in your drinking water.

I that may be a lot of research needs to be done.

But in the meanwhile, neither the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Department of Health or the Utilities did anything really to reach out to people drinking the water to let them know what the situation was.

Only recently, with Sanford's insistence.

Has the state finally picked up the investigation again and drilled wells between the factory location and Sanford and that was in April.

And lo and behold, they found some high concentrations of one four dioxane deep in the Florida aquifer.

>>Well you can find a link to the Orlando Sentinels reporting on one four dioxane on our website, plus my full interview with Kevin Spear from the Orlando Sentinel.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

Meanwhile, that is all the time we have for this week.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.