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Hurricane Milton was yet another pollution nightmare for Tampa Bay

More than 30 waterways across Tampa Bay were polluted when infrastructure couldn’t keep up.

Florida’s largest open water estuary and the millions of people who have built their lives around it barely had enough time to detox from the last hurricane-fueled wave of pollution before the next one hit.

Just as the Tampa Bay area was cleaning the mess from Hurricane Helene, along came Milton. The hurricane double-header doused piles of debris in floodwaters. Then Milton stirred up the pools of muck that had finally started to dry. The smells of spilled sewage, just beginning to fade, soured the air once more.

Through Friday [Oct. 18], local governments and utilities across the region had alerted state environmental regulators to more than 160 spills and pollution events from Milton.

When pumps lost power, when drains backed up and infrastructure failed, dirty water was cut loose into roads, homes and waterways.

According to a Tampa Bay Times review of reports to state regulators, an estimated 68 million gallons of spilled pollution has been reported so far across seven counties, a number that is likely a vast undercount and sure to rise as wastewater managers learn more about how facilities fared.