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Concerns grow as brown, murky water appears on the Treasure Coast

Posted at 5:29 PM, Oct 11, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-12 04:16:05-04

Many people on the Treasure Coast have voiced concerns about the appearance of brown, murky water.

RELATED: More Toxic Water coverage

It was discovered after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started discharging billions of gallons of Hurricane Irma runoff and Lake Okeechobee water.

There was a time when Chad Delrossa's view waspristinee.

Now?

"There's zero sea life," said Delrossa.

A brown, murky mess.

"You would never see that," he said.

It puts in perspective the situation on the Treasure Coast.

"Very uncharacteristic. Normally you can see the bottom," said Delrossa.

It's too soon to tell if algae blooms, similar to the ones in 2016, will appear.

However, there's good chance bacteria and maybe toxins may be in the water.

Martin County Ecosystem Restoration Management Manager Deborah Drum says the dirty water may stick around for weeks, maybe months.

It's important to note of all of the water flowing through the locks, only 10 percent of that is Lake Okeechobee water.

"If that's only 10 percent it puts some perspective on just how much basin water we're getting as well as when you combine those two things; that's when we get into those situations where we could have multiple years of recovery," said Drum.

Right now the environmentalists say the water is killing oysters and seagrass.