For over two decades, the Science and Environment Council (SEC), a not-for-profit consortium of the 40 leading science-based environmental nonprofit and government organizations in Sarasota and Manatee Counties, has convened discussions, informed policy and enhanced public awareness about science-based conversation and sustainable practices to protect and restore our natural environment. In early December, the SEC [...]
The EcoSummit will feature lively solutions-oriented lectures, panel discussions, storytelling and music. Dozens of national, regional and local experts will share fascinating insights and future-forward innovations for recharging our environment and reducing our impacts that will sustain our coastal community’s environment-based quality of life. The EcoSummit kicks off December 4th from 5:00 PM to 8:00 [...]
The Healthy Pond Collaborative-Sarasota is pleased to announce that it just completed its second year with a healthy pond program in Sarasota County that advised forty local communities how to maintain a healthy stormwater pond and provided $40,000 in grants to qualified participants that created over six miles of newly planted pond shoreline that will [...]
Willow Brook is a community in Sarasota that was built between 2000 and 2002 with 54 residences and a population of about 150. Their stormwater detention ponds are now over twenty years old and some enhancement is needed to help control bank erosion. To learn more about an ongoing healthy pond maintenance program, John Hawke, [...]
Thanks to the generous funding from the Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation, the Healthy Pond Collaborative-Manatee (HPC-Manatee) just concluded Year One of the three-year grant with a record number of visited pond communities and newly planted shoreline with aquatic plants that help reduce unsightly agal growth and costly bank erosion. The HPC-Manatee has been led [...]
The 2023 Watershed Summit held June 21-22 at the Charlotte Harbor Event & Conference Center in Punta Gorda shown above featured a number of experienced speakers pointing to the increasing concerns about the effect of excess nutrients in stormwater on the quality of our waterways and the alarming impact on seagrass. The two-day program was [...]
A surprising new finding about the polluted release from Piney Point was just revealed in an article in the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program’s Newsletter, Bay Reflections. It has been well documented that the spill at Piney Point contributed to algal blooms and red tide in the surrounding watersheds of Tampa Bay, but a new study [...]
