Way back when, , , , , we moved to Eau Gallie in 1956, , , , ,

The Indian River was fairly clear and quite swimmable. In the middle of the old swing bridges (Eau Gallie & Melbourne causeways) you could generally see the bottom of the channel. One day, while in the middle of the "Swing" we looked down and watched an aprox 12 FT sawfish swimming along the bottom of the channel.

Shrimping was unreal back then. I'd go with my father and some of the other neighborhood gentlemen. We'de take two galvanized trash cans and head to the old ice plant. If it was not open they had a vending machine where for a quarter-or-two you'd get a block of ice. There were always a couple "old boys" hanging around with their ice picks who would chip the ice for you for another quarter-or-two. One trash can would be pretty much filled with chipped ice and off we'de go tp the causways. Back then there were no aluminum poles; perhaps if you were rich enough, but way too expensive for most shrimpers, so everybody used bamboo poles. Now the "nets" where another thing! A lot of guys used plain old netting. But, the old-timers used "nets" made from chicken wire. You see, when the shrimp were running "thick", if you were using a net made from regular netting, the load would be too heavy to pull up repeatedly and you'd wear yourself out! The chicken wire allowed a lot of the "little" shrimp to escape so you were only pulling up the bigger shrimp! Pull up a load, put them in the trash can, cover with a layer of ice, go for another "dip". When the trash can was full, back to home where everybody started popping heads off, if that had not already been done on the bridge. There were many nights when the huge white shrimp were running; almost a pound each.

At times the blue crabs made shrimping almost impossible, the crabs would be so thick that they would form rafts under the kerosene lanterns that were hung down over the water.

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Dora Hates You

Edited: 04/08/2018 at 10:40 AM by dingpatch

Opening another inlet or the locks to flush the IRL would just be turning the ocean into our toilet and would be an extension of the same thought process that made the IRL what it is today. "It's only a little bit of sh_t and the water body is so big, let's just put it there. Problem solved." Sure the ocean would hide it for a while, maybe a long while, but, not forever. (Watch "Soylent Green" for a take on what happens when the oceans die.) The answer is to fix the problems, not hide them. Get these homes off septic tanks, quit flushing the middle of the state into the IRL AND quit fertilizing in the water shed. The answer is NOT "clean" septic tanks, there is no such thing. The answer to issue one is NO septic tanks. And, each homeowner should have to pay for their conversion. I have been paying to treat my sewage for 40 years at about $35/month (about $17,000 overall) plus the hookup fee (if I recall it was couple of thousand dollars). I don't mind floating a bond for the conversions and letting the homeowner finance at a low interest rate, but, I am against giving them the money (ie, me paying them) to convert. They have been getting a free ride for far too long. Each constituency wants to point the finger at the other and say they are the problem. The truth is that each are equally culpable and each must be addressed, but, not necessarily simultaneously. Everybody wants to wait to address their problem until the others are addressed. That will get us nowhere. While fertilization is the easiest, septic to sewer conversion is easier and less expensive than the watershed issue and, while it will take years and millions of dollars, it can be started almost immediately.

And, my parents paid to City of Melbourne treat my sewage for my first 23 years (another $10,000). So, almost $30,000 has been paid to Melbourne to treat my poop. Septic tanks only treat bacteria, they do not treat nutrients even when functioning optimally. (I know about UV treatment, etc, but, there are issues with that, too.)

 I cannot comment on the tech of sewage treatment. I also agree using the ocean is a bad idea too. The cities/counties are no making a valid argument to connect to sewer when they are having trouble dealing with the existing.

Like it or not development is not going to stop and the cities/counties have made plenty off of development fees.

sewage treatment ?
doesn't melbourne have injection wells?
not sure how good/bad they are or if its really healthy for mother earth

Another great discussion folks.
Im on the rivers coupla days a week. The water level fluctuates up and down by several feet every week or so. I dont think it's due to rain, and certainly not tides.
Does the water management district dump water from the st johns periodically? Other explanations?

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spindrift

Tides

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Dora Hates You

The IRL is a low flow ecosystem by natural design, if you start flushing it, it will be fundamentally changed.

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Specializing in sarcasm and condescending rhetoric since 1971.

Garcia and Worksux are on it.

 

As I understand the proposal currently:

The Port area would be used as a 1-way valve to introduce clean seawater

to the north Banana River pushing the mess down through the central IRL

and out Sebastian Inlet.  Biology, restoration vs engineering, etc. set aside,

I just can't see this as a really good plan.

 

I thought we learned back in the '70's that

"The solution to pollution is NOT dilution", rather,

it's reduce, reuse, recycle.  

In this case, it's reduce the load of nutrient nitrogen and phosphorus to the Lagoon.

 

Simplistically, there are three sources of these nutrients: 1) atmospheric deposition, 2) wastewater, 3) fertilizer.  Need to work on all three but,

In order of toughest and most expensive to cheapest, fastest, easiest:

1) Atmospheric deposition is tough, can't wrap the Lagoon in cellophane so set it aside for the moment.

2) Yes, we can clean up wastewater by upgrading treatment, getting rid of septic, setting standards for nutrients in reuse water (right, there are none), but these are slow and expensive, and lets face it, it's not a sexy problem that anybody want's to champion. 

3) So for a start, how about just quit using ornamental fertilizer.  Ag and some uses (like ball fields for example) need fertilizer.  The rest of the fertilizer is just not needed and if you think about it and it's pretty cheap to not fertilize   And simple too, you might be doing it right now.....   

So, 1) be cheap and lazy and quit using fertilizer (yes you!) and 2) lobby the IRL NEP and other governmental entities (County) to upgrade sewer, tie in septic and regulate nutrients in reuse water (yes, you again).  

just 2cents worth 

 

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

Looking at the Google Maps, it appears that if the locks were open at the Port, all of the water would be eventually pushed South through the narrow Mather's bridge area. It might help clear up the Banana River, but I can't see how it'd really help the IRL.

The IRL is a low flow ecosystem by natural design, if you start flushing it, it will be fundamentally changed

 

The 'natural' state of the lagoon is where the dunes are breached by hurricanes which open large areas of the lagoon directly to the Ocean, those breaches fill with sand, more breaches are made. etc...

The Natural state is where every couple years the entire lagoon gets opened to the ocean and flushed out. Instead of a continual island from the Cape to Vero, it should be a series of Islands. Opening another or several more inlets is more Natural than the closed cesspool we have now.

 

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As I said, there are some scientists here.

And some others with opinions.

From Toms link:

Coastal plain shorelines with medium wave energy exhibit distinct differences in morphology in areas with different tidal ranges. For example, barrier islands do not occur on macrotidal coasts. On microtidal coasts, which have the greatest abundance of barrier islands, the barriers are long and linear, with a predominance of storm washover influences.  On mesotidal coasts the barriers are short and stunted, with a characteristic drumstick shape. A plot of 21 coastal plain shorelines on a graph of mean wave height versus mean tidal range allowed further discrimination of the impact of these two factors on coastal morphology. In areas of low wave energy smaller tidal ranges are required to produce tide-dominant morphology than on medium wave energy coasts

This sounds like our coast, Long linear islands. But instead of a natural predominance of Storm washover influences, which no longer happen because of a build up of highways and seawalls, we are stuck with tide dominated morphology.

But is that scientific or just opinion?

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If it has evidentiary support, it is scientific.

If there is counter indicated evidence, it is militant stupidy.

If there is no evidence or the evidence is inconclusive, it is opinion.

 "...we are stuck with tide dominated morphology."

 

??? I don't know if this was sarcasm or misconception so I'll go with that latter and,

Correct, our east coast FL barrier island morphology is distinctly wave dominated, long and narrow, few natural inlets.  

Tidal morphology, short, stumpy islands, lots of inlets is FL west coast, not us.

And also correct, we do our best to prevent washover by building dunes, renoursishing beaches etc.  

But, back to the original topic, washover was never much of a water source for the IRL.  Not compared to an artificial inlet or pump.  So the "natural" or recent (geologic) condition is little seawater input to the IRL.  

One intersting (at least to me haha) note that you've also struck is that by stabilizing both east and west sides of the island,

we're slowing or preventing the natural transgression that the barrier island would be experiencing due to sea level rise.

We seem to be creating a narrowing, taller island, than would "naturally" exist if left unmolested and what that means going forward will be interesting. 

Another uncontrolled biogeology experiment. 

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

One last thought:

Most of the work I've seen on a "new inlet" or pumping or similar involves

adding seawater to the north Banana River, pusing that green/brown mess down south

and out Sebastian Inlet.

So, what if that process was reversed and one could pump the Wonka water

straight out Port Canaveral?  

Then Cocoa Beach could become the bunghole of the Banana River,

not Sebastian Inlet, which,

IMHO,

is a kinda nice place still. 

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

Not sure if opening locks or new inlet would do much more than flush the immediate area not the entire system.  An Uneducated guess to fix will cost much more than the $0.05 tax increase.

1) Change season ban on all fertilizers to year round, and pay for enforcement division - Brown water or Brown grass? would be hard to get public beind this.

2) Force septic to city sewer changes for all homes near the IRL, would require ton of $$$$$$$$, impact fee waivers, etc. Not fair to those who just did it out of their own pocket, public push-back?

3) Install Ecosystem baffle box filtering system at all point source water discharge pipes , again some $$$ but not as much as above. Then more $$ for maint of the filters/debris screens, etc.

4) Expand muck removal, seems to be helping to some degree?

5) Expand TRIAL oyster reef projects and clam projects (Inlet area? other areas?)...Experimental stuff, let FIT do this..free for public no $

That is just a quick list of ideas off the cuff...I think it will continue to decline as population increases and more lots get cleared BUT ask a local in Palm Bay or W. Melbourne about the state of the IRL..many really do not care, never use the river or even cross the bridges that much.  Looks grim...

^^SurferMic dropped some good ideas. The Brevard Zoo is building Oyster habitats to place by your dock or seawall
Brevard Zoo Oyster Gardening.....

I, for one, plan on a letter writing campaign to our State and Federal representatives. Squeaky wheel and all that......

Good on you RocketSurf!!! Do what you can!

As for the Oyster reef project(s) past and present, it needs a re-design.

.

The plastic Oyster "mats" and thousands of zip ties to secure the shells are being introduced into the ecosystem, Re-tool the current process, other areas use concrete/shell structures, etc. which should be much better than adding TONS of plastic even though it is for a good cause (We all know how quickly zip ties break down in the elements). Good idea, not so good design/execution but again I am not an expert on this subject just an obs.  

Maybe I am wrong and the growth rate exceeds degradation of the base material and nature traps all plastic in place? Seems an environmental engineer or some-one who slept in a Holiday Inn last night could solve this problem easily.

The cages seem to be a better soltuion, but not for a large area

I would like to hear more from the scientists on this, I bet if it were not for the dune restoration we could have had a pass somewhere along Playlinda to Seb inlet.

I was way north at playalinda(gasp no not on the beach side) but from the river it looked VERRRY narrow. perhaps ma nature will try it for us



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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

Dr. Zarillo of FIT has studied this in great detail.  Options including widening Sebastian Inlet, keeping the locks open and installing a new conduit between the IRL and Ocean were all evaluated.  It has been awhile since I saw his presentation, but I believe that doing any of those only produced a very insignificant change in the long run.  There just wasn't enough water exchange. If you are really interested I am sure you can find the presentation.

 

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/2015/08/21/canaveral-lock-save-lagoon/32132331/

Makes sense. Small orifices and not much chance of significant flow from inlet to inlet. Tides arrive at about the same time.

What I meant by fundamentally changing it, is once you open it up and increasing the flow things like dissolved oxygen and salinity are forever going to change and it wouldn't be the same type ecosystem anymore. There are much smarter people on here than I that can explain it in better detail. I'm just the knucklehead out there in waders with a YSI and a bunch of sample bottles. However this topic has given me a great idea for my GIS project.

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Specializing in sarcasm and condescending rhetoric since 1971.

Edited: 04/09/2018 at 07:41 PM by worksuxgetsponsered

Along this vein....I would think that tides arriving at the same time at that distance would not affect the inflow of water since it is not a pressured sealed system. I believe there is some wind driven slosh effect in the rivers. I know on a hard SW wind the 1000 islands of Cocoa Beach fill up with water. I have also shrimped up in the BR no-motor zone and Haulover Canal and have seen water movement under bridges. Since we have a predominate NE wind it would seem that there is a bit of a N->S flow. But as DaveFL76 says the end of the Banana river is so narrow water flow would be limited.
To Quote the FlaToday article "his $20,000 study for the St. Johns River Water Management District, he conducted several computer model runs, which included leaving the locks open......." That is pretty lame, only 20k?......we need to really figure this problem out and it will cost a lot more than that. Bottom line: the Powers that be need to wake up in Tallahassee and DC to help recover the IRL......

Ya. I suppose the daily wind cycle could act as a sort of very slow pump inlet to inlet. Maybe.