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 [...]
START was well represented at the first annual Climate Champions Beacon Awards presented by the Climate Adaption Center at a luncheon at Michael’s On East on April 18th. Founding START Board member, Ed Chiles, was honored for his work with the All Clams On Deck Program and Charles Reith received the award for his pioneering [...]
Thanks to Lambda Alpha International’s popular global webinar on Coastal Water Quality that aired on February 17th, the advice and successful experiences of some of the Suncoast’s leading experts and stakeholders working on water quality have now reached a world-wide audience. For those of you who may have missed this important event, we are providing [...]
Thanks to a very successful pilot pond program funded by a grant from Ed Chiles and Elizabeth Moore that helped enhance over a half mile of pond shoreline in Manatee County communities last year, START has been awarded a three-year $100,000 grant from Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation to create the Healthy Pond Collaborative Manatee. [...]
There are two basic approaches to improving the quality of our coastal waters. One is to focus on reducing the flow of excess nutrients into our waterways. This includes the move to close the polluting Piney Point storage facility, upgrading aging wastewater infrastructure like the Bee Ridge plant in Sarasota and START’s Healthy Pond Collaborative [...]
The Sarasota Tiger Bay Club, an organization of local citizens, policy makers and business leaders, meets monthly for luncheons at Michael’s On East Restaurant to hear a panel of experts address important topics of concern. The topics range from updates about pending legislation in Tallahassee, to local issues like the direction of the School Board [...]
The Florida manatee, designated the state marine mammal in 1975, is among the state’s most popular native animal. Manatees are often called gentle giants. They’re slow-moving, peaceful creatures that tend to flock toward human activity in search of warmth. However, they are not having a good year. More than 1,000 of the sea mammals have [...]
