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Fort Myers updates board on Manual Branch monitoring, cites legacy bacteria and nonpoint sources
Summary
City staff told the Environmental Advisory Board that Manual Branch shows consistently elevated but stable bacteria levels and that microbial source-tracing has not found sustained human wastewater indicators; staff emphasized trash, wildlife and storm-driven "first flush" events as likely drivers and outlined monitoring and outreach steps.
City environmental staff presented a progress update on the Manual Branch Pollution Reduction Plan on Jan. 6, saying long-term sampling shows consistently elevated but stable bacterial levels and no sustained, continuous human point source. Environmental compliance manager Justin Mahone told the board that the 2020 sewer spill prompted increased monitoring and a consent order with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection that led to the PRP.
"The consent order as a whole is very heavy towards utility improvements and utility evaluation, but did include a couple of things related to the stormwater system," Mahone said, describing corrective actions the city completed. He added that quarterly microbial source-tracing using the HF183 human-DNA marker and acetaminophen chemical tracing showed two consecutive non-detects sufficient to relieve two corrective actions tied to Manual Branch sampling.
GHD project manager Jenna Martin explained sampling and laboratory methods, saying surface-water grabs are collected under chain-of-custody and E. coli samples must reach the lab within six hours. "E. coli has only a 6 hour holding time from the time it's collected till it gets to the laboratory," she said, noting the city uses contracted, NELAC-certified and specialized labs for different tracers.
Staff and consultants summarized their interpretation: elevated results in the "difficult to discern" range point to legacy, nonpoint sources such as wildlife, trash and pet waste, not a continuous sanitary-sewer overflow. Mahone cited first-flush spikes after storms as a likely driver and highlighted completed and ongoing work including localized remediations (directional-drill illicit discharge remediation), monthly windshield surveys, a neighborhood water/sewer improvement (May 2022), continued voluntary monitoring, and participation in a multi-year Trash Free Waters outreach campaign funded by an EPA grant.
The board pressed staff on jurisdictional limits, detection of illicit connections and the cost of restoration. Mahone said identifying all illicit connections is unlikely without extensive diagnostic work and that an order-of-magnitude estimate to demuck and remove muck across the 2.5-mile branch was approximately $1.8–$2.0 million for demucking and disposal. He said the city has initiated a long-term sanitary sewer evaluation SSES project intended to identify pipe defects and inflow/infiltration.
Board members and public commenters urged more frequent public access to monitoring data and independent testing by community groups. In response, the board voted to recommend that the city's monitoring and trend reports be submitted to the City Council on a quarterly basis so elected officials and the public can more readily see results.
