1987 was a banner year for Tampa Bay. Twenty years ago, legislators created the state’s Surface Water Improvement and Management Program, known as SWIM. The legislation directed badly needed funding to the task of repairing lakes and bays marred by decades of pollution and wetland destruction.
Tampa Bay, designated as a priority in the legislation, has been its biggest beneficiary.
So far, the water management district’s SWIM program has restored more than 2,000 acres of bay habitat, with another 2,300 acres under construction or in design. The rehabilitated lands, some of the last wild spaces along Tampa Bay, have played an important role in the bay’s recovery.
At Cockroach Bay near Ruskin, SWIM crews are finalizing a 500-acre, 10-year restoration touted as one of the most successful coastal habitat restorations in the state.
South of Cockroach Bay, work is set to begin on what is likely to be the last of the large-scale restoration projects on Tampa Bay. The 2,400-acre “Rock Ponds” parcel had been proposed for a power plant in the 1980s. Hillsborough County and the water management district acquired the land from TECO in 2004. Impressive on their own, these projects are just two of more than 60 SWIM restoration
efforts around the bay.
As waterfront land becomes too expensive for public purchase, SWIM officials hope to forge more public-private partnerships, such as a recent 12-acre restoration on TECO-owned property near the utility’s Big Bend power plant in Apollo Beach.
Meanwhile, SWIM engineers continue to battle the bay’s biggest nemesis – pollution in stormwater runoff from a watershed that drains 2,400 square miles. SWIM projects are credited with removing more than 17 tons of nitrogen from the bay a year, the annual goal set by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program to maintain water quality in the face of enormous growth. Excess nitrogen fuels the growth of algae, which blocks sunlight seagrasses need to grow. As water quality has improved, these underwater nurseries are flourishing again in areas that had been barren
for decades.
As SWIM marks its 20th anniversary, its contributions will be felt for generations to come.
—Mary Kelley Hoppe
Written Summer 2007.
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