Charlotte County advances ‘1 Charlotte 1 Water’ plan; seeks funding and public comment

Brandon Moody, water quality resilience manager for Charlotte County, presented the draft "1 Charlotte 1 Water" plan at the Board of County Commissioners workshop on Oct. 21, 2025, saying the county is preparing to submit a final version for the board's acceptance after a public review period that closes Nov. 21.

Moody said the plan is built around four primary focus areas—monitoring, stormwater, drinking and wastewater, and planning and policy—and couples quantitative metrics with policy metrics so county staff and partners can measure progress year to year. "We've created these two suites, these quantitative metrics and these policy metrics that we're gonna use to kinda measure ourselves against year in and year out," Moody said.

The plan is intended as a living document to supplement existing department activities, not to replace them. Moody told commissioners that the county has already used state appropriations included in the FY26 budget to fund key initial work: pollutant-loading models and so-called reasonable assurance plans for impaired waters, a water-elevation monitoring network to support flood-risk and discharge modeling, and expanded sampling for micronutrients and metals.

Why it matters: Charlotte County sits at the downstream end of a complex watershed that includes contributions from the Peace River, Myakka River and other systems; board members and staff repeatedly said upstream flows complicate local restoration. Moody described the county's aim to show that it is acting to reduce local sources while using data and regional cooperation to…