Local Governments Consider Fertilizer Restrictions

Local governments in Florida are considering a proposed ordinance from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program that would restrict fertilizer use during the rainy season.

The Estuary Program is a tri-county organization devoted to restore and protect Tampa Bay. Its policy board approved the elective model ordinance in November 2008, and now cities including Clearwater and Largo are considering adopting a version of it.

“Nitrogen is a very important nutrient for plant growth, but too much nitrogen can cause algae blooms in the water that can block the sunlight that the seagrasses need and also cause lower dissolved oxygen and possible fish kills,” said Holly Greening, executive director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. “Managing the amount of nitrogen coming into Tampa Bay is very important for the health of the water itself as well for the fish and other things that live in the water.”

In its original form, the ordinance would do the following: Ban the application of fertilizers with nitrogen and phosphorous on lawn and landscape plants between June 1 and Sept. 30; prohibit the application of such fertilizers within 10 feet of a water body; restrict the retail sale of lawn fertilizers containing nitrogen and phosphorous during the summer; establish a licensing and certification program for lawn care professionals; encourage waterfront property owners to plant ground covers, shrub or other plants instead of grass in a 6-foot wide “no mow” zone along the water’s edge; and urge local governments to provide information about the nitrogen content of reclaimed water to customers using it for lawn irrigation.

The governments are free to modify the ordinance if they use it at all. Copies were given to county commissions in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Manatee, as well as the major cities in the counties – Clearwater and St. Petersburg in Pinellas.

According to the Estuary Program’s Web site, nitrogen is the primary pollutant in Tampa Bay, with residential runoff, including fertilizer residues, accounting for 32 percent of the nitrogen carried in stormwater to the bay. The Program’s research shows that even moderate compliance with such an ordinance could reduce nitrogen additions to the bay by 84 tons a year, which would also save millions of dollars in expensive stormwater treatment projects.

Largo, while not a member of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, is a member of the Tampa Bay Nitrogen Management Consortium, which is urging its members to adopt a version of this ordinance. The consortium is also expected to release numbers on Feb. 5 that would tell its members what their upper limits should be on nitrogen released back into the environment, said Irvin Kety, director of environmental services for Largo. The Largo City Commission will review the consortium’s proposed allocation and the Estuary Program’s proposed ordinance at a work session at 6 p.m. on Feb. 10 in the community room of City Hall, Kety said.

Clearwater City Councilman Paul Gibson is the city’s representative on the Estuary Program’s policy board, and he advocates adopting some version of the ordinance.

“Nitrogen is a significant source of damage to Tampa Bay, and the federal government is about to promulgate regulations that would require the regulation of nitrogen in the water, and we think it’s a good idea to be ahead of any federal mandates,” Gibson said. “Nitrogen feeds things like algae, and it takes the red tide and exacerbates the problem. There’s nothing good that can be said about nitrogen being discharged into Tampa Bay.”

The proposed ordinance was still with Clearwater’s legal department at press time, but Gibson said he expects it to come before the council within the next few weeks.

While nitrogen is a natural part of the environment, making up 78 percent of the air and is found naturally in bodies of water, increased human population densities often offsets its healthy balance in the environment, Greening said. Plant life is removed for development, which eliminates a natural filter; people use fertilizers with nitrogen in it; and cars add more nitrogen to the air, Greening said. In the late 1970s, the nitrogen problem had gotten bad, she said.

“At that point, in the area around Tampa, there were big sheets of algae on the surface of the bay, and it would die and float ashore, and it was very smelly at that time,” Greening said. “It smelled very bad, and the citizens along the bayfront area called for action. And that’s when a lot of the wastewater treatment plants started reducing the amount of nitrogen they had coming into the bay.”

Kety lived near MacDill Air Force Base at that time, and he remembers the stench as unbearable.

“We don’t want to go back in that direction,” Kety said. “We want a healthy bay, and controlling nitrogen is one of the things that maintains that water quality ... And so although Tampa Bay’s water quality has been improving over the last decade, and the Tampa Bay area has been meeting the water quality goals, it is still an important component that is regulated by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and by the EPA. We’re obligated to control the amount of nitrogen that’s coming off of the land from stormwater and how much nitrogen comes out of the wastewater plant and into the bay, and we have permits that limit (the release of nitrogen).”

Tampa Bay is fortunate, Greening said, in that it is one of the few places in the country that has seen some of its undersea seagrasses come back. The area has good rules in place that help to take nitrogen out of wastewater, but this proposed ordinance would take the next step by helping to limit how much nitrogen goes into the watershed to begin with, Greening said.

“This is a cost-effective way to manage nitrogen in the bay because you’re addressing the direct source instead of trying to get the nitrogen out of the water once it’s in it,” Greening said. “And certainly we’re encouraging all the municipalities to consider this (ordinance) because a collective effort is always more effective than individual efforts.”