2022 PROVISIONAL WATER QUALITY REPORT CARD

Dr. Marcus Beck,

Tampa Bay Estuary Program

11/15/2022

RA FRAMEWORK

  • Each year, assess attainment of chlorophyll threshold in each segment
  • Follow NMC actions for segments that don’t meet threshold
  • Annual reporting to FDEP

HILLSBOROUGH BAY

OLD TAMPA BAY

WATER QUALITY REPORT CARD

https://tbep-tech.github.io/wq-static/wq.pdf

Management

Regulatory

MANAGEMENT ACTIONS

  • Each bay segment assigned a management action

MANAGEMENT RESULTS

  • Oct, Nov, Dec based on average from five years prior

MANAGEMENT OUTCOMES

OLD TAMPA BAY DETAILS

REGULATORY OUTCOMES

CONCLUSIONS

  • All segments provisionally meet management targets and regulatory thresholds in 2022
  • First year of 2022 - 2026 RA period
  • Draft 2022 RA Update to be submitted to FDEP next month

TAKE HOME

  • Hopeful that preliminary 2022 water quality is a beginning to longer-term improvements
  • Water quality in OTB has been highly variable, one good year does not mean a long-term improvement
  • Seagrasses are suspected to continue to decline - What other stressors are at play?
  • Stick to our nitrogen load reduction efforts, but investigate other management actions to kickstart seagrass recovery

Tampa Bay Nitrogen Management Consortium