Piney Point update from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program
The Tampa Bay Estuary Program is working with regional partners to coordinate and synthesize water quality, benthic, seagrass, and fisheries monitoring data. We are also consulting with USF to model forecasted plume trajectory from the Piney Point discharge.
The primary pollutants of concern for this discharge are phosphorus and nitrogen (primarily ammonia nitrogen), which may stimulate an algae response and cause adverse effects on seagrass, fish, and other wildlife.
The Tampa Bay Estuary Program is focused on reducing nutrient pollution to Tampa Bay, no matter the source. As a community, we need to renew our commitment to a healthy Tampa Bay and continue to invest in protecting this natural resource that we’ve worked so hard to restore over the past 30+ years.
Our website (tbep.org) will provide links to baseline data and any updates from monitoring in the future. Additional information, including regular updates from FDEP, featured media interviews, and live drone footage are available at https://linktr.ee/TBEP. If you would like to share this statement on social media channels, visual resources are available for your use here.
Please direct any questions or requests for support to esherwood@tbep.org and mburke@tbep.org.