2008 Water Quality Summary Report Orange County Environmental Prepared by: Protection Division Marcia Anderson Clark, Julie Bortles, Natural Resource Jeff Darr, Management Lynn Denahan, Catherine Johnson , and Ecological Rob Sheridan Assessment Team TABLE OF CONTENTS BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS 3 Introduction Mayor 6 Rainfall Richard T. Crotty 7 Lake Data Pages Distict 1 Commissioner S. Scott Boyd 236 Bathymetric Data Distict 2 255 Stream Data Pages Commissioner Fred Brummer 364 Biological Analysis Distict 3 Commissioner 372 Remote Monitoring Stations Mildred Fernandez 389 Glossary of Terms Distict 4 Commissioner Linda Stewart 392 Appendix A 393 Appendix B Distict 5 Commissioner Bill Segal Distict 6 Commissioner Tiffany Moore Russell INTRODUCTION Floridians enjoy a year round climate basin. Things such as fertilizing your lawn in which to take advantage of recreating in with a zero phosphorus fertilizer, car washing lakes and streams. Orange County has over with phosphate free soaps, maintaining septic 500 lakes located in twelve major drainage tanks and drain fields, properly disposing of basins or watersheds, within its boundaries. hazardous waste, preventing oil leaks from These water bodies can change naturally over cars and equipment, cleaning up after pets, time from an open lake to marsh by filling in and limiting erosion all can positively affect a with organic material. Sometimes, human lake or stream several miles away. activities can speed this process along. In The County is required through the order to try to identify these changes, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination monitoring is used as a tool to determine if System (NPDES) program to protect our they are happening too quickly. surface waters. The Environmental Protecton The County has had a surface water Agency (EPA) has delegated this program to monitoring program in place since the late the Florida Department of Environmental 1960’s. The program began as a wastewater Protection (FDEP) since 2000. Through the treatment effluent discharge monitoring permit process the County and other local program and has become a comprehensive municipalities are required to identify large-scale effort across the county with pollutant sources and loadings, implement a quarterly sampling at over 200 sites. Rules monitoring program, and detect and eliminate and regulations have changed in the last non-stormwater discharges. thirty years so that there are few, if any Another program that has been wastewater discharges to surface waters. mandated by the State and Federal Stormwater runoff, or water flowing over the government is the Total Maximum Daily land surface, has become the primary means Load (TMDL) Program, which came from the by which contaminants can enter our lakes Federal Clean Water Act of 1972. This program identifies waters that do not meet and streams. This stormwater can pick up specific water quality criteria outlined in dirt, nutrients, bacteria, leaves and litter and Florida Administrative Code (F.A.C.) 62-302. carry these pollutants to a lake or stream. The FDEP analyzes the monitoring data that Since the 1980’s rules have been put into is generated by the County and based on this place that limit the amount of direct information, some waterbodies are listed as discharge into surface waters, however, the impaired for certain constituents. As these County has many areas built before these water bodies are identified, the County and regulations that that have no stormwater other stakeholders must establish the pollution treatment. As we try to determine the source or sources, and eventually create a sources of pollution in each particular basin, Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP) to there are many things that can be done by all eliminate or decrease these sources to to help water quality throughout the county. improve water quality. This program has Everyday practices at home can help become the driving force behind the water preserve or improve water quality in the quality monitoring program. INTRODUCTION Page 4 There are many ways to gauge the time data transmissions at a small number health of a water body, one way is to of locations. This is a partnership with the measure the Trophic State Index (TSI). United States Geological Survey (USGS) This index, originally developed by and the South Florida Water Management Brezonik in 1984, takes the level of District (SFWMD) through which the nitrogen, phosphorus and chlorophyll a County has located water quality probes into account and provides the level of with these agency’s communication and productivity. This level of productivity stage equipment. This allows staff and the equates to its trophic state. There are public to view what is happening in the three levels of trophism: oligotrophic, rivers on an hourly basis without having to mesotrophic and eutrophic. The more be physically at the site. Please see the productive the lake, the more eutrophic it Remote Monitoring section for this becomes. The trophic state succession is a information and the location of the sites. naturally occurring process, but can be accelerated over time by anthropogenic or Data Compilation human sources mentioned above. The data that has been compiled for Eutrophic lakes typically have a larger this report includes historic and current concentration of nitrogen or phosphorus data represented in trend graphs for each (or both) and large amounts of chlorophyll sample site covering the twelve major a due to the abundance of algae. These drainage basins within Orange County. A lakes also have a larger fish, plant and linear regression was performed on each invertebrate population, whereas the graph to determine if the trend is oligotrophic lakes are clearer, but significant for a ten year period (red dotted typically have low amounts of nutrients line) and another for the historical period and wildlife. of record (blue solid line). For lakes, the Stream sites do not have an index TSI for each year has been calculated using calculated on them, but do have the same the formula located in the Appendix A of constituents as the lakes tested. this report. The stream pages have trend Other means of determining a water graphs of bacteria and either nutrients or body’s health may be through the dissolved oxygen, depending on the biological processes and types of impairment designation on the stream organisms present. The County has been segment. Some sites will have biological collecting data on invertebrate diversity data in addition to the chemical and for many years and has baseline diversity physical data. This data summarizes plant on several sites. The biology section of or invertebrate surveys performed on the this report will go into detail on the water body and the overall outcome. There methods used to analyze the plant and is a separate section of the report for more invertebrate populations in selected lakes comprehensive biological analyses. and streams. The graphs presented in the following The County has also begun remote data pages are representative of data monitoring of water quality through real collected through a number of years to the present. This data should be used for INTRODUCTION Page 5 informational purposes only. Some of the sites have gaps between many years due to site http://waterdata.usgs.gov/fl/nwis/rt. access issues or budgetary reasons. Not all All calibration and multiprobe collection parameters analyzed are included in this report; procedures are sampled using USGS and please refer to Appendix B for the complete list FDEP collection SOP’s. of parameters. Summary Methods Orange County’s impaired water The County follows the Florida Department bodies increased to approximately 50. of Environmental Protection (FDEP) Standard Most of these impairments are most likely Operating Procedures (SOP) for all field due to nutrient runoff from surrounding sampling. The analytical laboratories are land use. Nutrients remain the largest issue certified through the National Environmental facing many of our lakes. Many projects Laboratory Accreditation Program (NELAP) are scheduled or ongoing to try to mitigate and are audited through the Florida Department the amount of nutrients getting into the of Health (FDOH). Once the data is collected, lakes from stormwater conveyances or it is sent to the Orange County Water Atlas overland flow. There are also education (www.orange.wateratlas.org), and then to the programs in place to let homeowners know FDEP to upload to the Florida STORET (http:// about practices that they can change to help storet.dep.state.fl.us/WrmSpa) database. From the water quality from their backyard or a there the data is accessible by the state’s TMDL lake in their drainage basin. assessment team to determine any impairment. It is then forwarded to the Enivronmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) STORET database, where they will also determine if a seperate Federal TMDL will be created. The physical conditions in the field are collected and analyzed by multiprobe meters. Theses parameters include temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductivity, and sometimes turbidity. All readings reflect surface conditions at the time of sample collection. Bathymetric data was collected using Odom Hydrographic System’s Hydrotrac single beam unit. This unit collects many data points per second and triangulates them over the lake area. The data are then averaged together and extrapolated into one image of the lake bottom. Real time data are transmitted to a site at the USGS for a quality control check