Bob's World with Bob Moro
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A quarter century of pollution
I first wrote about this seriously polluted creek running through the heart of the city of Fort Myers in November of 2024. Here’s an update since I wrote the story: nothing has changed.
Manuel’s Branch is a narrow, 2.5-mile creek that runs through the urbanized areas of Fort Myers. Its headwaters, like Billy’s Creek, begin east of Evans Ave. in the Canal Street section of town, and it runs under US 41, past Lee Memorial Hospital, Fort Myers High School and the athletic fields, and through the Manuel’s Branch Neighborhood Park. It waves hello to to the Edison Ford Estates before dumping into the Caloosahatchee River.
And dumping is exactly what it does. Manuel’s Branch, and it’s birth partner Billy’s Creek, are full of human fecal waste bacteria. Really full. Fecal bacteria levels are measured in MPNs (“Most Probable Number”). In Canada, the number of MPN’s per sample considered safe for drinking is zero, CWK Waterkeeper Emeritus John Cassani explained that the Florida criterium for E. coli states that a monthly geometric mean shall not exceed 126, nor exceed 410 on 10% or more of five samples taken in any 30-day period. In an 11/19/25 Calusa Waterkeeper Report, Manuel’s Branch levels since 2021 have averaged a stunning 2,579 MPNs; at times the waters have ranged between 4000 and 16000 MPN’s.
That is more than 20 times higher than Florida’s Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (FDEP) acceptable levels, and 44 times higher than the EPA’s limit. (Florida says it is working to better align its water quality standards with federal regulations.) For the recent two-year monitoring period, enterococci MPNs exceeded 70 MPN every month of the 42 months measured, with the excess averaging an astounding 3,890%
“About 92% of samples collected exceeded state criteria,” said Dr. Richard Whitman, MS PhD, CEO of Heal our Harbor, and a noted fecal bacteria expert who has worked with the Calusa Waterkeeper Alliance (CWK) in studying the creek’s pollution problem for many years. “I’ve never seen this before; it’s incredible,” he said.
This comes as no surprise to scientists, water quality advocates, the State of Florida, and the people who run the City of Fort Myers. How long have they known this? At least a quarter of a century. Human fecal bacteria was first documented there in 2001. Since 2017, CWK has consistently tested and documented the creek’s feces problem.
Contributing to the mess have been chronic human sewage discharges from the two obsolete and overwhelmed sewer treatment facilities servicing the city; with significant events in 2018 and 2020 that discharged massive amounts of raw sewage into the creek. In 2020 one sewage spill dumped 183,000 gallons of human waste into the creek.
WINK’s Clair Gault once described the creek as “pudding.” In February of 2001 FDEP ordered the city to perform corrective actions, but no real progress has been made. In 2021, Florida passed legislation requiring the state’s wastewater utilities to submit a five year plan to eliminate harmful discharges into our rivers and waterways, and improve infrastructure. The law originally called for all discharge into rivers to end in 2028, but implementation has since been delayed until 2032.
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One estimate from Fort Myers officials suggested that 350 million more dollars will have to be spent by the new deadline. Jason Sciandra, Assistant Director of Public Utilities told Gulf Coast news last June that the state has been sending treated sewage discharges into the state’s rivers since the 80’s.
CWK has tried hard to work with city and state officials to clean up the creek. While acknowledging their legal responsibility to remedy the problem, the city has relied on consent orders from FDEP waving their obligations to meet deadlines and update their overwhelmed sewage treatment systems.
Why? Because it’s an expensive fix. Simply testing for fecal pollution is costly and time consuming. CWK has played a major role in bearing those costs for years.
On December 2, CWK tried again to get officials to intervene. They presented the results of an extensive Microbial Source Investigation, two years in the making, to the Fort Myers Environmental Advisory Board at City Hall. (You can read the report on CWK’s website.) I was there, listening, as they explained that while they have identified the scope of the fecal waste problem, and the many “hot-spots” along the creek, they still do not know where the sewage waste is coming from.
To do that requires that more locations be tested, and for there to be more frequent testing of every site. Expensive testing. And that’s just to find where the problem begins. The fix is a whole new ball game. CWK presenters Jason Pim and Ken Chernesky pointed out that lessons learned from the study could benefit all of Florida, which is struggling to keep up with the effects of increased development and urbanization.
These consistently high fecal bacteria levels pose many serious and sometimes even life threatening health problems, including severe gastrointestinal issues, Salmonella, E. coli infections, and hepatitis. And of course there’s the environmental damage to aquatic life, and the enjoyment of our waters.
The Fort Myers Environmental Advisory Board members seemed impressed and concerned about the severity of the pollution, and the city’s slow pace of complying with FDEP regulations and upgrading their antiquated wastewater treatment system.
City Council member Lin Bochette attended the presentation, and acknowledged the potential costs to fix the mess. He suggested that a number of deep injection wells will likely have to be constructed to reduce discharges to surface waters, and they are expensive to create.
Questions remain. Why is the city willing to allow Manuel’s Branch and Billy’s Creek to run through the city carrying so much pollution? Will they assist CWK in funding the increased testing needed to find the exact locations where human waste is entering the creeks? The city deserves credit for posting some warning signs along the river (incredibly, they are not not required to do so under Florida law), but there is a dearth of them, and the warnings are not specific.
As Jason Pim said in his remarks, “a picture of a fish with a line through it suggests there are no fish there,” it doesn’t tell the public how dangerous the waters are. And FDEP needs to reconsider the Consent Order granting remedy delays in the face of their own and CWK’s clear documentation of the growing pollution problem in the city’s creeks.
Officials have blamed the rapid growth and urbanization of Fort Myers for the problem, but if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Past Commander Bob Moro AP
Fort Myers Power Squadron-America’s Boating Club
