An estuary in distress just two decades ago — its shorelines and waters ravaged by dredging and pollution — Tampa Bay has waged a remarkable comeback, thanks in large part to a group of individuals who banded together 20 years ago to form the Agency on Bay Management. No group before or since has had such a profound impact on the course of Tampa Bay. Here, Bay Soundings pays tribute to ABM’s legacy, the estuary it helped revive, and the individuals who led the charge for the bay’s recovery.
By Mary Kelley Hoppe (originally published in January 2006)
Distress Signals
The tee-shirt is long gone, but for Ernie Estevez, it was a sign of the times — a canvas billboard bearing the moniker of a troupe of student activists that had playfully dubbed themselves the Ecological Clam Chowder and Marching Society. The year was 1970. A nation divided was at war in Vietnam. Campus protests were brewing. A fledgling environmental movement was sweeping the nation.
In Tampa, a walk along toney Bayshore Boulevard during the dog days of summer was a rancid affair. It was said that the stench from rotting algae fueled by barely treated sewage that poured unchecked into the bay was at times so strong that it tarnished the silver in stately homes along the scenic drive.
Tampa Bay, the region’s namesake and lifeblood, was in a world of hurt.
Decades of pollution and dredging for waterfront development spurred by rampant growth had robbed the bay of much of its verdant seagrass meadows and natural shoreline. The loss of habitat and perilously low levels of dissolved oxygen in some parts of the bay decimated once-bountiful fisheries. In classrooms and neighborhoods and civic clubs around the bay, the seeds of discontent were growing. Some residents had had enough and began sounding the clarion call to “Save our Bay.”
Another 15 years would pass before the establishment of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council’s Agency on Bay Management. But the movement and momentum that would ultimately spawn the watchdog group had begun.
Estevez, then a marine biology student at the University of South Florida, now director of Mote Marine Lab’s Center for Coastal Ecology, recalls the convergence of issues that incited a community to action. The Army Corps of Engineers had dusted off its Four Rivers Project, a massive public works scheme to channelize and impound four rivers — the Withlacoochee, Hillsborough, Okalawaha and Peace — mostly for flood control. “It was kind of a nuclear solution to flooding that seemed way out of proportion to the damage,” said Estevez.
Only partially completed, the project resulted in the replumbing of the Palm River — tamed into submission by new dikes, dams and channels — and the creation of the Tampa Bypass Canal, which diverted flows from the Hillsborough River down a water chute to Tampa Bay.
Eager developers floated the idea of turning the upper portion of Old Tampa Bay above the Courtney Campbell Causeway into a freshwater lake and ridding it of its unsightly mudflats. The idea was ultimately quashed but not before gaining serious attention by champions in high places.
“It seems silly now, but Rudy Rodriguez and his gang of (Hillsborough County) commissioners really pushed for that,” says Bill Taft, a biology professor at the University of South Florida.
Meanwhile, wetlands all along the bay’s perimeter were being bulldozed to feed a growing community’s insatiable appetite for more waterfront land. North of Rocky Point, the intensive shoreline denuding and building spree rallied residents and environmentalists to action, culminating in a showdown with the Hillsborough County Commission attended by USF students wearing black armbands to signify the death of the bay.
USF was a hotbed of environmental activism. The catalysts — science professors John Betz, Joe Simon, Taft and Clint Dawes — have (with the exception of Dawes) since departed, but their legacy lives on. “For whatever reason, they chose to rise from the trenches and say ‘this is what needs to be done’ and they did it with good science,” said longtime bay activist Robin Lewis of his former professors and mentors.
Bumper politics: A 1970s-era bumper sticker rails against the rampant dredging and filling of Tampa Bay for shoreline development.
Save Our Bay
A USF conference started the ball rolling. In 1968, marine scientists and geologists gathered to consider the effects of dredging and filling on the beleaguered estuary, knowing that harbor deepening to accommodate increased ship traffic was coming.
“It was clear the bay was losing its shallows and getting deeper,” says Estevez. In Hillsborough Bay, massive deposits of oyster shell were being stripped from the bay bottom to be brought ashore and sold for road fill. The carnage from that dredging alone, says Estevez, created turbidity problems in Hillsborough Bay that lasted 20 years.
“We listened to what the professors had to say,” adds Lewis, “and they stood up and spoke out at county and city council meetings.”
Lewis and Estevez weren’t the only ones paying attention. A young mother and president of the Hillsborough County League of Women Voters by the name of Betty Castor was also listening. “The county commission was beginning to rezone the entire shoreline of Tampa Bay,” Castor recalls. “Residents hated the idea that there would be continued encroachment north.”
A League-sponsored conference branded “Who Is Killing Tampa Bay?” drew experts from USF who helped frame the issues and the fact that the focus really needed to be on Old Tampa Bay, she said.
The rallying point was a 3,000- acre chunk of undeveloped land in Northwest Hillsborough County known as the Bower Tract, named for its owner, Miami real estate tycoon Lewis Bower. Half of its acres were beneath the ebb and flow of Old Tampa Bay.
In the submerged lands, developers eyed dredged-and-dried prime real estate. In 1969, Intervest Corporation of Orlando announced plans to buy the Bower Tract and build a new town on a scale never before attempted, anchored by lavish homes, high-rise apartments, a convention hotel, yacht club and marina. Bayport Colony, as it was christened, was to attract upwards of 80,000 residents.
After a protracted fight pitting environmentalists against developers, the proposal was ultimately felled by an unlikely sword. The Register Act, passed in 1968 and sponsored by Hillsborough County legislator William Register, had considerably strengthened existing dredge-and-fill laws, putting the burden of proof on applicants to demonstrate that projects would not cause wetlands undue environmental harm. As the Bower Tract development entailed the wholesale elimination of wetlands in favor of seawalls, finger canals and subdivisions, its backers were unable to meet the test. The massive scheme imploded.
The delicious irony, for environmentalists, was that throughout the affair William Register, author of the bill, was attorney of record for Intervest.
Out of that battle emerged Save Our Bay, an environmental coalition formed by Castor and her first husband, Don. Living room meetings at their Carrollwood home were spirited discussions, involving Lewis, USF’s Taft, league member Sally Casper and a handful of other foot-soldiers.
“There was this growing expertise and alliances forged between activists and people who were very smart and knowledgeable about the issues,” says Castor, whose successful bid for a county commission seat in 1972 gave her an even stronger platform from which to advocate for the bay.
Raw Sewage, Rotting Algae Raises Hackles
As new residents continued to pour into Tampa Bay, so did the sewage from dozens of package treatment plants and a massive City of Tampa wastewater plant heaving under the deluge.
Bombarded by nutrients, the bay went into overdrive, producing dense mats of algae that sucked the oxygen of the estuary, causing massive fish kills and littering shorelines with weedy rot.
The organic, malodorous ooze in Hillsborough Bay was so deep, according to witnesses, that you had to navigate six feet of goop before hitting bottom.
Roger Stewart had his eye on the slime.
“He had a little shed down on Tampa’s Hooker Point that was his base of operations, and a crappy little boat,” recalls Estevez. ”He was kind of like a riverkeeper but still managed to operate below the radar screen.”
Stewart wouldn’t toil in obscurity for long.
Fresh from a 21-year stint in the military, the former Air Force pilot earned a degree in zoology from USF in 1966 and went to work as a “lab slave” with the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, the precursor to the Environmental Protection Agency. His office was on a barge docked in Hillsborough Bay, though he rarely spent time there.
His job was to collect water samples throughout Hillsborough Bay and field water quality complaints.
The City of Tampa’s sewer outfall was off the end of Hooker’s Point about 20 feet underwater. Spotting it was easy. In those days the sewage made a boil.
“I used to take the Chamber of Commerce folks out in their Brooks Brothers suits and expose them to a little ‘scenery,’ ” he says.
He later went to work for the Hillsborough County Health Department, establishing a protocol for the regular sampling of Tampa Bay, but became frustrated when the department failed to warn beachgoers about the sewage swirling around Davis Islands near Beer Can Beach. “With bacterial counts up in the millions, we pushed for warning signs on the beach,” says Stewart. When the department refused to act, a feisty Stewart and co-op student Rick Cantrell, now director of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Mine Reclamation, took matters into their own hands, posting signs borrowed from the road department. A week later the signs had vanished.
In 1972, Stewart became head of the Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission (EPC) where he continued to grow the bay’s water sampling program and butt heads with powerbrokers.
The same year the Florida Legislature passed the Wilson-Grizzle Bill mandating advanced wastewater treatment for sewage plants discharging into the bay. Plans were made to upgrade the City of Tampa treatment plant with support from a huge federal grant.
In the interim, the city continued to take on new customers from the county even as its plant was running over capacity. “Every bucket of slop put into that sewage plant went right out into Tampa Bay,” said Stewart.
“It was like selling pencils with no lead, they were selling service they didn’t have.”
The City of Tampa pressed on, convincing regulators it was okay. Stewart balked, urging the county commission to disapprove the city practice. The city shot back, and Stewart was fired for insubordination. The county commission subsequently rehired him after consulting with their attorneys.
Twice during the tumultuous early 1970s, Tampa’s environmental blunders thrust them into the national spotlight. The city’s sewage woes were revealed in a 60 Minutes feature on the effects of excessive growth, when Stewart accompanied Mike Wallace on a tour of the bay that exposed the noxious brew bubbling up from the muck. Wallace returned to Tampa Bay for a follow-up story after Stewart’s firing by the county commission.
AWT Marks Turning Point
Legislation championed by bay activists ultimately brought relief in the form of the Wilson-Grizzle Act of 1972, which mandated advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) for sewage plants discharging into the bay. Mayor Dick Greco announced plans in 1973 to replace the city’s aging sewage plant with a $90-million AWT facility made possible with federal funding covering 75% of the costs. Greco hired Southwest Florida Water Management District Director Dale Twachtmann to oversee the construction. But it would be six more years before the Howard F. Curren Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant began operating.
Curren, a retired navy captain who was assistant director of the city’s department of sanitary sewers, worked tirelessly to make the plant a reality.
So confident was Twachtmann in the technology the new facility would employ that he frequently boasted he would drink the water coming out of the plant. He got his chance in 1979.
In the days leading up to the plant’s dedication, Twachtmann gathered staff and reporters to witness an historic tasting. “We arranged a long table with a white tablecloth and champagne glasses ö I poured the treated wastewater right into a silver pitcher and drank it,” he said.
“We watched over the first two years of the plant’s opening,” recalls Twachtmann. “We could see sunlight getting down three and four and five feet, and it kept getting better. Seagrasses began to grow, fish came back and birds. It was a beautiful thing, and a lot of people had worked really hard to make it happen.”
Harbor Deepening
Spoil sports: Army Corps of Engineers makes headlines when dredging project runs amok, smothering the bay bottom in mountains of silty goop.
Another contentious issue roiling the waters in the mid-1970s was the proposed deepening of the Tampa harbor. “The Corps of Engineers came in with an old-style plan,” said Estevez. “They really resented us and treated the requirement for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) with contempt.”
Biologist Bill Fehring was hired by the Tampa Port Authority in 1974 to quell the uproar. “Quite honestly, I was brought to the port authority to neutralize Robin Lewis,” he quips. The adversaries would eventually cultivate a healthy respect for one another.
But back then, he acknowledges, “there was a lot of distrust and a lot of misunderstanding.”
One of the first things Fehring did was to set up an environmental committee made up of scientists including Lewis, Simon and Taft from USF, and Audubon Warden Frank “Dusty” Dunstan.
The group began getting people together and looking for solutions, but there were plenty of knock-down, drag-out fights along the way, particularly over the issue of how to handle spoil material scooped from the bay bottom.
Dunstan and Lewis, by then a biology professor at Hillsborough Community College, fought the harbor deepening project for five years. But it was Dunstan’s successor, Audubon Warden Jim Rodgers, who ultimately pulled back the curtain on one of the Corps’ most notorious messes.
In November 1978, Rodgers discovered a fine water-saturated muck, up to 12 feet thick or more in places, that had escaped from the dredging project and was rapidly dispersing over the bay bottom more than a mile and a half from where it was supposed to be contained.
“I think we kind of goofed,” admitted a Corps official during a meeting with environmentalists to explain the mountains of gelatinous muck oozing out into Hillsborough Bay.
Simon hit the roof, recalls Fehring, who credits him for working with the Port Authority to get the problem cleaned up. “He was the first to blow the whistle, and the first to step up and acknowledge when it had been successfully resolved.
“That was the kind of professional trust we were able to develop,” he says.
Tampa resident Sally Thompson credits the port’s environmental committee with “getting everyone to talk.” Thompson joined Save Our Bay in 1974. She would eventually become president of the organization, before folding it into its successor, the Hillsborough Environmental Coalition, which Lewis had organized the year before.
Thompson recalls inviting Manatee County to the table — then deeply concerned about ocean disposal of dredged material — for one of those meetings. “It was the first time they were asked to be involved,” she said.
The $147-million harbor deepening project ultimately dug up more than 70 million cubic yards of bay bottom to make way for larger ships entering the harbor and keep Tampa competitive with other U.S. port cities.
BASIS Sets Stage for Future of Tampa Bay, ABM
While the transition to advanced wastewater treatment marked a critical first step in the bay’s recovery, scientists knew that the bay’s sustained recovery would require a greater understanding of the estuary’s physical, chemical and biological workings.
That led to the region’s first Bay Area Scientific Information Symposium (BASIS I) in 1982, and the creation of a Tampa Bay Study Commission which identified 40 major issues of concern. Two years later, with the support of local governments and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council (RPC), the Florida Legislature formed a Tampa Bay Management Study Commission to devise a workplan.
Completed in 1985, “The Future of Tampa Bay” was the first comprehensive bay management blueprint, crafted with input from a diverse group of government and industry stakeholders who recognized the need for a new entity to advocate on behalf of the bay.
Lewis advanced the idea of creating a bay management agency in a call to Jan Platt. “Fisherman that I am, I had fished Tampa Bay all my life and seen how it had declined. I was delighted to take this on,” says the former Hillsborough County commissioner and RPC member. Platt and Lewis then met with RPC Director Bill Ockunzzi to solicit the council’s support.
“We knew about sister organizations in Chesapeake Bay and San Francisco Bay, and recognized that this was the natural progression of what needed to be done to protect the bay,” said Ockunzzi, now mayor of Indian Rocks Beach. “The trick was creating the will and finding the funding,” he added.
Debates over its structure ensued. While Lewis and Estevez favored an authority with strong powers, it was my view that we would probably be more successful as an advisory group, said Platt. “We needed a measured approach to get buy-in from the municipalities, power companies and phosphate industry.”
The advisory model prevailed. Established under the umbrella of the RPC, the 40-member Agency on Bay Management (ABM) — a broad-based committee of scientists, government and industry representatives, environmentalists and fishing interests — held its first meeting in September 1985. Platt was the watchdog group’s first chairman, a position she held for nearly a decade.
“It was one of those rare moments in time when everyone realized we had to do something, and there was the right chemistry,” said Doug Robison, ABM’s first staff director, who lauds the pivotal roles of Lewis and Platt. “It wouldn’t have worked without them.”
The young agency quickly mobilized to tackle the issues of the day, including an early battle over shrimp trawling in Tampa Bay. Platt recalls one eye-opening trip to meet an inbound shrimp boat. “To see what a small portion of the catch was actually shrimp was alarming,” she says, referring to the unintentional bycatch of marine life killed in shrimp trawls.
“We had a lot of discussion about shrimping in Tampa Bay,” says former Hillsborough State Representative Mary Figg, a founding member of the ABM. She remembers a visit from Tampa shrimper and restaurant owner Robert Richards. “Robert was pretty frustrated ö but he understood that if he was going to be able to continue shrimping he had to be a good steward,” said Figg.
Figg also was keeping close tabs on problems caused by excess nutrients in the bay. In 1988, she co-sponsored the Grizzle-Figg Bill, which reauthorized and strengthened standards established in the 1972 Wilson-Grizzle Bill mandating advanced wastewater treatment. Grizzle-Figg reduced nitrogen inputs in those loadings, advancing the course of the bay’s cleanup, while enlarging the legislation’s geographic reach from Pasco County down to Charlotte Harbor.
Before long, ABM had chalked up a succession of victories, building clout and credibility throughout the region and in Tallahassee. It was ABM that took on the powers at TECO to thwart the utility’s plan to build a power plant on Cockroach Bay. ABM that lobbied for a ban on shrimp trawling in the bay. ABM that encouraged Hillsborough County to create an artificial reef program. ABM that pushed for saltwater fishing licenses, seagrass monitoring, and a pollution recovery trust fund. And ABM that thrust stormwater runoff into the spotlight when the “silent evil” was still largely treated as a flood control issue.
Behind the scenes, a succession of talented planners and biologists shepherded the committee along the way — Robison, then Mike Perry, Peter Clark (who later started Tampa Bay Watch) and Suzanne Cooper, ABM’s sole staff member and a principal planner at the RPC.
“It was one of those rare moments in time when everyone realized we had to do something.”
Friends in High Places
Two of ABM’s greatest legacies were still to come.
In 1987, the Florida Legislature authorized the creation of the Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) program, designating Tampa Bay as a priority water body. While ABM pushed hard for the legislation, Platt credits Governor Bob Martinez and Dale Twachtmann, his Department of Environmental Regulation chief, with making it happen. “We never would have pulled it off without these two,” she says.
SWIM provided a platform and funding for doing the dirt-turning coastal restoration work bay advocates were calling for.
Martinez was well schooled on water issues when he arrived in Tallahassee in 1987. As mayor of Tampa from 1979 to 1987, he ushered in a new era marked by the opening of the Howard F. Curren AWT plant. Born and raised just a stone’s throw from the Hillsborough River, he grew up fishing the river and Old Tampa Bay.
In the 1970s, Martinez served on the governing board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, chairing three of its river basin boards and presiding as hearing officer for the setting of lake levels. “That’s where I got my first immersion in water issues,” he says. “As a result I gained a great deal of respect for the district and its mission.”
In marshalling support for SWIM, Martinez insisted on two things: “that we don’t create a new agency — the district already had the staff and knew the issues, and that the Tampa Bay estuary be designated a priority,” he said.
Governor Martinez made other sizable contributions as well, establishing Preservation 2000 in 1990, the largest state conservation land acquisition program in the country. The 10-year program bankrolled $300 million a year for the purchase of environmentally sensitive lands with funding from bonds and documentary stamps. Less visible but no less noteworthy, Martinez also backed legislation to allow long-term municipal bonding of stormwater systems, making it economically feasible for cities and counties to finance stormwater improvements.
Meanwhile, ABM set its sights on Washington and a new national estuary program. Securing a coveted spot in the program would bring federal funding to Tampa Bay to finance important scientific research and the development of a comprehensive conservation and management plan. ABM and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council lobbied hard for Tampa Bay’s nomination, which was sponsored by Congressman Sam Gibbons.
Those efforts paid off in 1990 when Tampa Bay was accepted into the national estuary program. Dick Eckenrod, one of the founding members of the ABM, was named executive director of the Tampa Bay National Estuary Program.
It was evident from the beginning that Tampa Bay had a head start. “Many of the estuary programs then, and some still today, don’t have strong local government representation — and they’re not nearly as successful,” said Eckenrod. “It was that connection ABM made early on that made all the difference.”
Torchbearers: ABM Enters New Era
“I think the group learned from the very beginning that you have to get along, you have to sit down and listen to everyone’s opinions,” says current ABM Chairwoman Mary Maloof, mayor of Treasure Island.
“That’s in large measure the value of the agency,” adds Fehring, who steered the Port of Tampa through some contentious battles. “ABM has made it possible to have honest discussions. If they come to a consensus that something is good — or bad — it creates the political climate for policymakers to make decisions.”
Lewis credits ABM’s science-based advocacy, which drew its earliest breaths from a remarkable group of scientists at USF and the students whom they inspired. “It’s a precious commodity that’s lacking in many other areas of the state,” he says.
As ABM enters a new era, the issues are remarkably similar, and remarkably different.
Pollution from stormwater runoff looms larger than ever as thousands of new residents pour into the region. Pacesetting research by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program has revealed the damaging impacts of air pollution on the bay. The Corps of Engineers recently announced recommendations to widen the main shipping channel to provide safe passage for mammoth ships the size of modern skyscrapers. Docile manatees dodge a daily gauntlet of speed boats, as frustrated boaters drive increasingly long distances to put their boats in the water. Red tides continue to confound researchers, poison fishes and the best-laid plans of beachgoers. And the battle against invasive plants and marine organisms with few natural predators wages on.
ABM stands guard, ever vigilant, but mindful of impressive gains — a bay that is clearer today than it was two decades ago with more seagrasses, a success story that has made Tampa Bay the envy of the nation.
RPC Director Manny Pumariega, who revived and spearheaded plans in 1999 to garner signatures for a specialty license plate for Tampa Bay, says the agency’s staying power reflects the commitment of individuals “who were in it for the long term and stuck it out. And we’re not done yet — we still have a long way to go.”
For Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor, whose parents Betty and Don were early catalysts in the fight to save Tampa Bay, ABM stands tall. “I was struck coming into a group that I didn’t know too well to find a committee whose work is science-based, that focuses on what’s best for the resource and manages to rise above the political undercurrents.
“It’s been a breath of fresh air.”