The Global Underwater Explorers, supported by Brownie’s Global logistics, began a long-term collaboration with Dr. Brian Lapointe and the FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Vero Beach, Florida.
During this collaboration multiple dive teams hit reefs at varying depths in Ft. Pierce, Palm Beach and Broward County. A top priority was identifying invasive toxic algae blooms that are destroying reef life in South Florida. A major contributor to this problem are sewage outfalls. With a team of divers, scientists and a Triton Submarine the team submerged into a cloud of brown muck coming out of the Hollywood outfall.
This discharge of primary sewage from the city of Hollywood, Florida contains high levels of nitrate nutrients as well as pharmaceuticals and hormones. 47.5 million gallons per day are discharged, which is the combined permitted flow from Hollywood, Cooper City and Davie Waste Water Treatment Plants.
According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection there are over 3,500 active wastewater facilities regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Approximately 1,400 of these facilities are classified as industrial and approximately 2,100 as domestic wastewater. Treated effluent and reclaimed water from these facilities is over 1.5 billion
gallons per day. This includes disposal through surface water outfalls, deep aquifer injection wells, and other groundwater disposal such as percolation ponds and spray fields.
Music: Mutine – Pose tes Mains – Creative Commons
Surface Video: Rich Denmark
U/W Video: Jarrod Jablonski, Brian Lapointe
Sub video: Robert Carmichael
Story/Editing: Vanessa Belz, Rich Denmark
http://www.projectbaseline.org/gulfstream
http://www.globalunderwaterexplorers.org
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