2025 PROVISIONAL WATER QUALITY REPORT CARD

Dr. Marcus Beck,

Tampa Bay Estuary Program

Dec 9, 2025

RA FRAMEWORK

  • Each year, assess attainment of water quality thresholds
  • Annual reporting to FDEP, fourth year of 2022-2026 RA period
  • Today’s results include data through October

SEASONAL CHLOROPHYLL

CHLOROPHYLL BY SITE

SEASONAL LIGHT ATTENUATION

LIGHT ATTENUATION BY SITE

WATER QUALITY REPORT CARD

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

Management

Management

Regulatory

Regulatory

REGULATORY THRESHOLDS

  • Each bay segment evaluated by chlorophyll-a threshold

REGULATORY OUTCOMES

* 2025 Dec based on average from five years prior

PYRODINIUM STATUS

EVALUATING SSOs

  • FDEP maintains Public Notice of Pollution database
  • Reports indicate location, date, contact, and narrative description
  • Details in narrative description…

EVALUATING SSOs

  • An example of a spill volume description:
[1] "at approximately 9:30am the public works department received a call regarding an overflowing manhole.  staff immediately arrived on-scene to find that manhole 4-101 on enterprise rd. was indeed overflowing.  the overflow was caused by grease blockage in the 8\" gravity sewer line located behind 2 fernery ln.  approximately 25 gallons of wastewater seeped out of the manhole into the grass adjacent.  staff utilized the vac truck to capture the wastewater overflow and disinfected the area.  no waterbodies were impacted.  the blockage in the sewer line was removed.  this particular sewer system was recently cleaned two weeks ago as a part of our proactive cleaning program.    "

SSOs 2017 to present

  • 2016 baseline ~200M gallons

TAMPA BAY ANNUAL RAINFALL

2024 SEAGRASS RESULTS: SEGMENT

  • Continued loss in OTB, gain in HB

2025 SEAGRASS TRANSECTS

2025 SEAGRASS TRANSECTS BY SITE

CONCLUSIONS

  • All segments provisionally (through October) meet regulatory thresholds, all segments provisionally green for management targets
  • Pyrodinium blooms significantly smaller in the last three years
  • OTB still a marginal bay segment, continued seagrass coverage loss, slight uptick in frequency occurrence in 2025
  • Fourth year of 2022 - 2026 RA period